Issues

Okay...I'm ready to have a baby now! Hehe, if only it were that easy. I would have to say that so far my pregnancy has been fairly easy, up until this week. I have now become so uncomfortable poor Tom is probably getting really tired of hearing my constant complaining. Oh well. Only six days left if Bear is on time. I really can't over emphasize how slow the time is going now. Most of our days are filled with movies, books, and strange conversations seeing as even venturing outside is hard due to the extremely icy roads and sidewalks. I just love Michigan winters.

As you may have noticed, the template for my blog has changed several times within the last few days. I have tired to use several different layouts created by independent people but each one has had its share of bugs. Being rather inept when it comes to computers I didn't have the patience to figure out the what the problems were and reverted back to one of Bloggers basic templates. Unfortunately I really can't stand the way it looks now so it will probably change several more times before too long.

Merry Christmas

*Sigh* Well this was probably the quietest Christmas I have ever had. Being only 10 days away from our due date, we weren't allowed to go anywhere. We did make a really good dinner and I made my first cheese cake...yay. While shopping for the ingredients for this Christmas dinner I became thoroughly disgusted with my fellow Central Michiganers and the whole "holiday" season in general. It took me nearly two hours to complete picking up the items on a relatively small list at our local Meijer. Every isle of the store was packed with angry people who were fighting over the last one of "this" or the missing "that". We've also been watching a lot of TV lately due to the lack of anything else to do in East Lansing during Christmas. This depressed me even more. For the last week we have been bombarded by commercials counting down the number of shopping days until Christmas. And then the day after Christmas it's all about the after Christmas sales...spend, spend, spend. ahh! Even if you aren't a religious person the holiday season should mean something more than this...it's just depressing. For two people who can't be with our families this Christmas, the season has taken on a whole new meaning.

We had another appointment today and everything is still going really well. Bear's heart rate has slowed down and he's still in the right position. Now if we could only get him moving...10 days to go and counting. I think we have decided on Connor Elijah Nance. We have been working on this name forever and this one has finally stuck. We have also decided to take Spring semester off and come home for awhile so we can spend time learning how to be parents and let everybody else meet the baby. It looks like I will be flying back with the baby in early February and Tom and one of his friends will be driving the car back shortly after. It will be so nice to be back in the Northwest!

Almost there...

Ugh! Two weeks and five days to go and boy am I feeling it! Everything seems to hurt and itch at the same time. It's all worth it though. Every time he moves I'm reminded of how awesome this whole process is. Pregnancy and delivery aren't miracles in themselves, but the entirely new individual that is produced from the process sure is. Even though he hasn't made an appearance yet, he obviously has his own personality and likes and dislikes. I can already tell he loves to hear music. Whenever he's moving around like mad all I have to do is sing to him and he gets really still. After which he usually ends up with the hiccups. I can't wait to meet him!

We had a doctor's appointment today and everything is still going great. He's still in the right position for delivery and has a really strong heartbeat. We also toured the birthing center where the delivery will take place. I've never been excited about delivering in a hospital but the rooms are really nice and they seem to be committed to providing a mother centered experience. Too many hospitals and obstetricians still prescribe to the view that women need to be rescued from the labor process. This usually results in a lot of medication and superfluous procedures. The way I see it is that women have been doing this for...well...forever. So why mess up such a natural process if not absolutely necessary. We'll see though. I could be like one of those women from the movies who are screaming for an epidural two minutes into labor. =)

Busy, busy, busy

Wow! Life has been moving at an incredible pace these last few weeks. Can you believe it....we have exactly four weeks to go until the due date! In one week he will be considered full term so the doctor told me to start expecting him sometime next week all the way through January. I am so not patient enough for this! I'm seeing the doctor now every week and the bear seems to be doing just great. He's already in the right position and is gaining weight every day! Or maybe that's just me. =) Anyway, he still moves quite a bit although I think the dancing and kickboxing is over for now due to lack of room, thank goodness!

Our trip down to Mississippi for Thanksgiving went really well. Mississippi is actually really beautiful at this time of year. The day we drove down there it was 80 degrees and I was thinking that it was really weird to be having this kind of weather for Thanksgiving. The next day, however, we woke up and it was a beautiful clear 40 degree day. Now that's Thanksgiving. Another new Thanksgiving experience we had was having collard greens with dinner. These took me by surprise. Dinner, however, was wonderful and we had a lot of fun spending time with Tom's family. I was so glad we were able to make the trip down there. The entire ride home I sat in the back seat with my feet up asking Tom a bunch of really stupid questions to keep him awake.

School is finally almost over! I only have a take home test to finish and an impossible statistics paper to write. I'm so close to being done I can almost taste it! Overall, however, the semester was actually a pretty good one. I enjoyed most of the classes and met a whole bunch of really great people. I'm even getting excited about continuing in the field of forensic anthropology and starting my Master's research. Who knows though, I may yet end up back in medicine again. I just have too many interests. =)

Well happy holidays everybody. After I finish my last paper I will be able to write more often and keep everybody informed on how the baby is progressing. We're almost there!

It's been a year!

On November 11 Tom and I celebrated our one year anniversary. I can't even begin to express how odd it seems to think that I have been married for an entire year. I was always the girl who would tell people I wasn't going to get married until I was in my thirties...and kids...well I couldn't even imagine! Oh how life likes to take you for ride! You think you have your whole life planned out and wham! Something entirely better comes along. I guess that's what makes life so interesting though. If it were as predictable as we all planned it out to be, we really wouldn't learn much in the process. I think I'm one of those people who believes that you can't really make mistakes in life. We all make different decisions throughout our lives that lead us down different paths. Eventually we all end up somewhere on the other side...hopefully happy to be where we are. I guess if there are mistakes they would have to be those negative experiences we repeat over and over again without learning anything from.

So the little bear is growing like mad everyday. When he moves now it actually feels like a little person in my tummy trying to make more room for himself. He likes to move in the early mornings during my statistics class and then late at night while Tom and I are usually watching a movie. Immediately after all of his movement he gets really still and starts hiccuping. He does this pretty much every night and it's really cute. I can't wait to see what he's like outside of the womb. I'm doing pretty well except for the sleepiness, sore hips, swollen ankles, sore back, tired feet...uhhh...basically everything that goes along with pregnancy. I only have three weeks left of class and am so thankful! Sitting for two hours discussing the difference between cause and manner of death isn't agreeing with my level of concentration anymore. My stupid switch is in the on position permanently. I'm hoping this is due to the high level of hormones surging through my body...hopefully! =)

Little Bear

*Sigh* Another visitor has come and gone and we are now left to deal with the bleak winter of Central Michigan by ourselves. Tom's mom spent the last week with us and once again I put my homework on the back burner. This weekend will inevitably be full of stats, murder, and skeletal trauma. Anyway, Tom's mom took us shopping and we now have a very cute bassinet, a baby swing, and new clothes (for the baby of course). Tom was complaining that the baby has a bigger wardrobe than he does and the baby isn't even here yet. We have been calling him little bear lately, due to the fact that he feels like a little bear moving inside my tummy. So we have been buying him clothing with bears on it. He'll be so cute! Wow...listen to me...did anyone ever think I would be saying things like that?

I finally had a doctors appointment last Monday and everything is going great. The little bear is healthy and has a strong heartbeat. We have been approved to make the long car trip down to Mississippi for Thanksgiving as long as I drink tons of water and get out and walk every hour and a half. That is going to make one long trip!

Winter has finally come to the Lansing area. We had our first snow yesterday! It didn't stick around very long but it was cool to see it snow so early. Most of the leaves have fallen off the trees so the landscape is looking rather dead. Snow makes everything look better.

A good day for a murder

I love Autumn. Blustery days full of dark gray clouds and rain just make you want to stay inside and read a good mystery. Speaking of mystery, they just announced the results of the DNA testing from that case I wrote about a month or two ago. Just as a quick reminder, a body was discovered in the basement of a man's house in England at the end of the 19th century. The body had been buried there with the removal of anything that would help aid in it's identification. A few weeks earlier the woman of the house had gone missing so when the police got wind of Crippen suddenly leaving the country they apprehended him, tried him, and executed him for murder all within a couple of months. Just recently researchers have been able to get their hands on some DNA evidence from the recovered body and compare it to living relatives of Crippen's wife. And guess what...the body didn't belong to his wife! So now the question is who's body was it and how did it get there...hmmmm......here is the press release info if you are interested

http://www.special.newsroom.msu.edu/crippen/

I guess this has already received a huge amount of press in England.

Here and back again

Alas, Noel's short trip to Michigan has come and gone and it's just the two of us again. Well three if you count the little dude residing in my tummy. We had a great time with Noel shopping, going to a pumpkin patch and watching movies. I regret to say that I probably did a total of an hour or two of homework the entire time she was here...oops! Time goes by quickly when you are having fun. I think the corn maze was one of the highlights of the week. We went in thinking it would be easy and ended up spending an hour going in circles. Close to the end Noel and I cheated by going through the corn. Nobody was looking...

Now it is back to the world of statistics and murder. At the moment I'm in the middle of writing two papers. The first is a statistical analysis of a whole bunch of craniometric data collected from a population in Borneo at the end of the 19th century. The researches picked their subjects in order to show how cranial capacity could be used to prove Europeans were by far superior to pretty much everyone else by their big heads. Interestingly they usually had to manipulate the data in order to get at the results they wanted. My job here is to take the data and use it for a not so racial purpose. My second paper is on the Black Dahlia murder. If gruesome unsolved crimes are your thing then this is the murder case for you. My goodness. This poor woman was the victim of one of the most brutal crimes of the 20th century. Oh yeah, I watched the movie too...don't bother. It's bad. There is very little, if any truth in it.

Okay, I promised that I would not subject myself to the embarrassment of putting pictures of me pregnant up on the blog. I have been begged several times by different people, however, so here you go....

Circus Fillet

My sister is here! She came all the way from the great state of Washington to spend 11 days with us! Our very small apartment has just gotten smaller! Last night the three of us went to see Cirque du Soleil's Saltimbanco which Tom so lovingly refers to as Circus Fillet. It was really amazing to see what people can do with their bodies with lots of training. I don't think I could ever be that flexible even if I worked at it! I even had a hard time sitting in the stadium chairs for two hours. That might have had something to do with the pregnancy though.

It think today we are going to a pumpkin patch and then to an Irish pub tonight for some live music. I love four day weekends!

Baby Update

So far everything is going great with our energetic baby boy. He continues his dancing every time I sit down which you actually see by the slight movements my tummy makes. He's about 25 weeks now and looks something like this...

Honestly it's hard for me to believe that he's already that developed! Hopefully we will be getting another ultrasound soon so we can see what he really looks like. We were finally approved for the state's health insurance program and are hoping for all of our important material to show up early next week. Yay...finally! It has been a really long and drawn out process. My next vote for president will be for anyone who is in support of a drastic reform of this stupid industry. I found it really interesting that the bill that President Bush just vetoed is one that was going to expand a federally funded health insurance program for pregnant women and children who don't qualify for their own state's program...boy am I glad I'm poor enough to get the state's help since my country doesn't seem to want to help me.

I thought I'd also throw in some pictures of our apartment. It may be small but we've tried to make it feel like home.

Here's the living room...

and the kitchen (oh! and an apple pie that I baked from scratch! Can you believe it? I actually made something from scratch!)...

Leaf Peepers

This last weekend Tom and I took a three day trip up into Northern Michigan to celebrate our anniversary. We stayed two nights in Mackinaw City which is the last city you come to before crossing the bridge into the Upper Peninsula of Michigan or U.P. The city itself is rather small but has a diverse range of fudge shops, local restaurant dives and tee-shirt shops. On Saturday we drove up into the U.P. in search of the beautiful color change that is so unique to this area. This weekend and next weekend were supposed to be the peak times to see color change in the U.P. and guess what? Global warming has stuck once again. Because of the uncharacteristically hot and dry summer, the leaves are falling off of the trees while still green! We talked to a guy who worked at one of the light houses out on the Peninsula and he told us that last year they didn't get snow until after New Years and Lake Superior hasn't frozen over completely in something like six years. Hmmm...how frustrating. We did, however, get to see some color, lots of lighthouses, beaches, really neat homes and we finally found out what a pastie was. Oh, by the way, the Yoopers of Northern Michigan have a name for people like us...leaf peepers =)

On Sunday we took a short ferry ride over to the island of Mackinac which was very reminiscent of a foot ferry traveling across the Puget Sound. Mackinac Island is found in the straight between Lake Huron and Lake Michigan. They don't let any motor vehicles on the roads so the main source of transportation there is bicycles and horses. It took Tom and I about 1.5 hours to ride the 8 miles around the island. It was so beautiful, not to mention peaceful. One thing we don't have in East Lansing is peace and quiet so it was a welcomed relief. The town itself is very reminiscent of a turn of the century town with it's historic buildings and horse drawn carriages. We were surprised to find that the island is a city unto itself and has its own mayor, police dept, fire dept, library and school. Tom and I decided that we will live there when we are millionaires. Hehe...a rich forensic anthropologist...that's funny.

Overall I didn't want the weekend to end. It's supposed to get up into the 80's again this week and I have way too much homework. I need to find a Master's Degree that requires lots of travel and very little studying. =)

Lots of work...and some fun too!

The last two weeks have gone by so quickly! I spend most of the time these days reading journal articles, doing dental charts, and comparing antemortem/postmortem radiographs. I admit I've become somewhat of a sucker for a good positive identification! Anyway, yesterday Tom and I went to a BBQ held by the head of the forensics dept. here at MSU. Before we headed over to his house, however, we all stopped by this beautiful apple orchard about five miles out of East Lansing. We had never been apple picking before so we had a great time. We ended up taking home about 20lbs of various species of apple at less than 50 cents a pound! It was great! It makes me wonder why we all have become so accustomed to paying $1.99 per pound in the grocery store for old apples that are shipped from all over the world. That's exactly what you have to pay here for Washington apples...$1.99! Why waste so much money when you have better, fresher, and probably healthier fruits right in your own backyard?

It was so gorgeous that day too! The sun was out and there was a wonderful breeze. Now all we have to do is figure out what to do with 20lbs of apples! We also had a great time at the BBQ. Tom got to play a few rounds of croquette while I played one of my favorite games ever...Apples to Apples. I've missed playing that game with my family so much!

Now that fall is finally upon us the colors are really starting to change here! I'm so excited! We really don't get anything like it at home in Washington. Tom and I are going up into Northern Michigan this weekend as an early celebration of our anniversary. I'm really hoping the weather gets a bit cooler. Today was 90 degrees and I'm tired of it. Hot weather and pregnancy don't mix. Well...better get back to all of my reading!

Frankenmuth

A traveler trekking across the United States will most likely run into a small German Village in every state. Although each town is entirely void of any real Germans, or those who speak any German, they try their hardest to imitate the quaint lifestyle of a small community found somewhere in the Alps or even the Black Forest. Michigan is no exception with it's rather eclectic town of Frankenmuth. Oddities abound in this German style village including everything from it's motorcycling Chiwawa to it's House of Horrors. Tom and I enjoyed our day there walking around in the shops and eating the best German food I have had in a long time. After living in Vienna I swore I would never eat Wiener Schnitzel ever again but after almost four years I couldn't help myself. I think my favorite part of the trip, however, was Zehnder's Market Place. The pastries here defy any qualification I could give them except "awesome". I love food if you can't tell. Their bread was great too which coming from a bread snob is high praise!

After traveling around in the Midwest I have come to the conclusion that Midwesterners have got to be the friendliest people on this planet. Everywhere we have gone so far there have been people who have helped us along the way with maps, hotels, places to eat, movie theaters, various weather predictions and explanations for Michigan's terrible drivers. Although it is a rather flat place to live geographically, the company is great!

A story of murder...

Late one evening in 1910 London, the American born Dr. and Mrs. Crippen bid farewell to their dinner guests. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary that night except for the fact that that was the last time Mrs. Crippen was ever seen alive again. Over the next few weeks friends of the Crippens noticed that Mr. Crippen began pawning off his missing wife's jewelry and openly paraded around with his new love interest Ethel Clara LeNeve. When asked for the ware abouts of his wife, he simply replied she had taken ill on a trip to America and died there while visiting relatives. Unsatisfied with this answer, friends of Mrs. Crippen went to the police. During an interview with the police, Crippen admitted that he had lied about his wife. He told them that she had run away with one of her past lovers and he had lied to keep them both from any embarrassment. Satisfied with the answer, the police dropped the case. Everything might have gone off well after this had Mr. Crippen and Ms. LeNeve not suddenly decided to leave the country by boarding a boat to America in full disguise. When the police got wind of this, a thorough search of the house was conducted.

What the police found was of no surprise to them...a body buried in the basement of the house. What was surprising, however, was the complete absence of any limbs, bones, the head or anything else that might be used to identify the person. The only identifying mark on the body was a small scar on the abdomen. It was well known that Mrs. Crippen had undergone surgery in her past which left a small scar very similar to the one found on the body. There was also a trace of the chemical hyocine in the body which Crippen, being a doctor, had access to. The police took this to be absolutely incriminating evidence and had Mr. Crippen captured, tried and hanged in a matter of months. So did he really do it? Apparently Crippen received a letter while awaiting sentencing that was from his supposedly dead wife claiming she was sorry but could not identify herself for fear of embarrassment. The court didn't seem to think this was worth looking into.

Tom and I went to a talk on this murder last Friday by a toxicologist who believes there may be some evidence to prove he didn't. The murder case itself is second to only one in England and that of course is Jack the Ripper. There have been numerous movies and books on this case, not to mention a very VERY cheesy Broadway musical. Just recently this toxicologist was able to obtain a small piece of one of the samples taken from the body. He was also able to identify several relatives of Mrs. Crippens making it possible to do a DNA analysis. The thing that is so cool about this is the tests are all being done here at MSU. So if you are interested, I'll let you know how the results turned out.

Adjusting

I had forgotten how difficult it was to start all over at a brand new school. Learning to get around, getting in the right classes, knowing where to eat, where to shop, who to talk to...Good Grief! Without Tom I don't know how I'd do it. What I have found is that if you ask questions people will usually give you pretty good answers. A couple of days ago I was feeling kind of nervous about working with the cadavers in the anatomy lab and being pregnant. They are no longer using formaldehyde in the embalming process but they still use some pretty nasty chemicals. I was worried that being exposed to those chemicals for six hours a week might have some affect on the baby. Needless to say, all the other profs including my advisor felt the same way too. So now I am in Stats and will be taking the intensive clinical anatomy course this summer. Oh boy.

One major thing I love about grad school so far is the lack of testing! It's mostly reading, papers and presentations. I like this! I'm also taking a survey of forensic science and a topics in forensic anthropology class. Both are really laid back. The professors basically get to pick whatever topics they want to cover. We usually end up filling up the time with case studies and stories of really bazaar and interesting crimes/investigations. Not bad!

Michigan's Ocean

Yesterday was so beautiful Tom and I decided to drive 90 miles west of East Lansing to the Great Lake of Michigan. I wasn't expecting much, seeing as it was only a lake and my favorite place on Earth happens to be the Oregon Coast. I was pleasantly surprised, however, by the sandy beach and absolutely enormous scale of the water. Lake Michigan is so large it actually looks like and feels like an ocean minus the smell. There were even a few seagulls flying around. We ate at an ice cream place in the middle of nowhere that had the best ice cream. I may just may get used to this place!

Today, on the other hand, was completely different. It was the first day of class and it was one of those days that nightmares are made of. First off my schedule gave me a specific time to be in a specific classroom for anatomy. So another Masters student and I showed up early and to our dismay the instructor started the class by saying, "Welcome to Doctor Patient Relations." Huh? So to make a long story short we spent the next 45 min trying to figure out what was going on and in the end we found out they had just decided to change the time to an hour later. Apparently all 150 premed students were informed of this and the 4 anthropology students were not.

Later that day was the anatomy open lab where I had my first encounter with a human cadaver. Let me rephrase that...a lot of human cadavers. Wow, I don't even know what really to say. I think it may take me a few days to actually come up with the right words.

Here he is!

Isn't he adorable? He looks a little bit like a snowman at this stage. The ultrasound was taken at 17 weeks and I think the nurse said he weighed about 9 ounces at that point. It's amazing to me to see these pictures and think that that little guy is the one doing all the dancing inside my tummy.

Today was a rather interesting day. We had a severe thunderstorm go right over the top of us complete with high winds, tons of lightening, thunder that shook the apartment and even a small tornado. I had never been through anything quite like it so I was ready to run for the hills. Tom, on the other hand, was loving every minute of it. I swear...that man would tie himself down to metal post and let a tornado go right over the top of him for the love of weather.

I also made it to the bookstore today to buy my books for class. It is a good thing that two of my classes don't require books because the anatomy class books ended up costing $260.00 alone. There were something like 19 books recommended for the course but only four were required. Yikes! Well, I think I will go back to enjoying my last few days of freedom. Watching TV will soon be more of a privilege come Monday.

Okay...time for some ranting! It has come to my immediate attention that the health insurance industry in this country is a joke! One would assume that an industry whose main goal is to take care of the "health" of it's country would not allow pregnant women to go uninsured. Isn't it funny that it is against federal law to call pregnancy a preexisting condition and yet every single insurance company out there calls it one...with a six to twelve month waiting period. They have found so many ridiculous loop holes in this god forsaken system that they are actually getting away with it. I guess this is what happens when you allow your country's health care to be a "for profit" system.

Enough of that. On to happier news. I'm afraid Tom and I will have quite a rascal on our hands come January. It seems he loves not only to move around a little here and there but he also likes to dance, do gymnastics and occasionally try his hand at martial arts. I'm sure it will get more and more interesting as he grows. A new life is truly an amazing thing!

He budged!

This morning I woke up felling very strange. I was having this odd sensation that something was turning over and over in my stomach. And then it hit me...our baby was moving and I could finally feel it!!! When I finally realized this I just about attacked poor Tom and jolted him out of a very deep sleep. Pregnancy is so fun. =)

Day before yesterday Tom and I decided to explore a little outside of East Lansing and ended up in two different towns about an hour north of here. The first was called Birch Run and it had probably the largest outlet mall in the Midwest. It had everything...including a good portion of the population of Michigan. The next town was Frankenmuth which is home to the largest
Christmas store in the world. You really have to see this place to believe it. It's about the size of a Super Wallmart or Costco and has enough blinking and sparkling lights to cause a small seizure.

We also went on our first grocery shopping excursion. I think the homesickness really hit me when I found out they didn't carry Tillamock cheese here. In fact they didn't really have any good cheese at all. I think I'm going to have to go in search of cheese. I can't live without good cheese!

We're here!

We finally made it to Michigan! East Lansing is actually a really cute town. MSU, however, is much bigger than I had imagined. Tom and I finally got everything out of the truck yesterday and into our apartment. Like most university apartments it falls into the ghetto chic category of architecture from the outside. The inside, on the other hand, is great! New hardwood floors, new kitchen, small but definitely full of charm. The biggest challenge will be seeing if all of our stuff fits.

The four and a half days it took to get here were full of boring landscape, flat tires, tornado/severe thunderstorm warnings, and plenty of 100+ degree weather. I would say South Dakota wins for state with the least interesting stretches of I-90.

Everything is going really well with the baby. For those of you who don't know I had an ultra sound last week and it seems we have a big healthy BEAUTIFUL baby boy! When we get the scanner hooked up I will post one of the ultra sound pics.