{Questions courtesy of Chilihead:
http://www.donttryit.com/justdont/2007/06/enquiring_minds.html}

How did you start blogging?

I realize now that I started blogging at summer camp when I was 10, before personal computers or especially the Internet existed.

Wha?

At sleep-away camp, I used to write these multi-page letters to my friends, over the course of several days, reporting in on various activities, people, things I was thinking. I often decorated the margins. My favorite thing to do was draw a chain that wrapped around the long vertical red line on the left side of my notebook paper (no fancy-pants stationery for me), ending in an anchor and then a row of little seaweed plants and fish across the bottom. I guess that was my first banner design.

I kept journals in college, and then after graduation, I started taking improv theater classes. One teacher offered a stand-up comedy workshop. I thought my journal was very funny, so I tried reading it out loud there. Didn’t go over well.

Not long after, a theater friend invited me to visit her performance art class at the local state university. After almost two hours of watching my friend and her classmates each take a turn doing a performance piece that would introduce themselves to the class, I raised my hand and asked if I could take a turn. Pulled those same journal entries out of my bag and read them. Went over much better with this crowd. I ended up taking the class, and the following semester I enrolled in the Master’s program, ultimately getting a degree in memorizing my journal entries, performing them, and calling it art.

Years passed, journal-inspired performances gave way to puppetry, improvisational theater, and real jobs in journalism, public relations, and a few other things.

Blogging revolution took a while to get to my desktop. For whatever reason. Last fall, in the midst of a career crisis, I found myself making one of those lists, of things I wanted to do in my life. Blogging was on the list. By the end of the day, I was posting my list in my first blog entry. It was anonymous. For about 10 minutes. I showed my husband. I showed my career counselor (who was EXTREMELY worried about the damage I might cause myself by being so frank in public, even anonymously). One by one, I shared the link with select close friends.

I installed stat counter and joyously gnawed over the details of my five or six visitors.

A few months later, I was hired to work as an editor for Parenting.com, where I was introduced to their inspiring and talented group of mommy and daddy bloggers. I got hooked on their stories. Started clicking on blogrolls, lurking at various sites.

Eventually, I wanted my blogging to be more public. To write something I could show my family. Plus, I was starting a new activity, learning how to bike ride. Seemed like a good topic.

I started Easy as Falling Off a (Insert Object of Choice Here). I quickly found excuses to write about knitting and food as well as biking.

The only problem was that I got pregnant a few weeks into the new blog. Biking was much less appealing at that point, but I couldn’t talk about the pregnancy yet. So I started keeping a private journal (for the first time in YEARS) and waited.

A few weeks ago, I loaded that journal onto my new pregnancy blog, The Calm Before The Stork, goaded my husband into designing a nifty banner, and now I’m off and running.

Did you intend to be a blog w/a following? If so, how did you go about it?

I’m a slut for attention. As I mentioned, I performed my JOURNAL ENTRIES on a STAGE, in front of STRANGERS, for goodness sakes. So, yes, I wanted a following. But I also don’t entirely know what that means yet. I do understand the phrase “comments crack” however as I get completely giddy when I get them, and crash when I don’t. You can almost guess my mood by checking my stat counter. And I’m not that popular. Best day ever? About 100 visitors.

I know I need to go out in the blogosphere and make some friends. I am in the process of doing that, somewhat. I signed up at blogher.com and got one stranger to stop by. I’m also blogging at Parenting.com, and SFist.com. Those sites help get people curious about me.

What do you hope to achieve or accomplish with your blog? Have you been successful? If not, do you have a plan to achieve those goals?

Having a place to flex my muscles as a writer. Sharing my pregnancy story with my extended family, and maybe a few strangers. Supporting my newly growing family with the ad revenue (snort).

Has the focus of your blog changed since you started blogging? How?

I’ve already managed to sneak food in with little reference to the pregnancy. Just want to share my recipes. Knitting is next…

What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you started?

I think I’m still just starting. Maybe I should have thought more about using a pseudonym instead of our real names?

Do you make money with your blog?

A whopping $1.28 so far, thanks to a few folks clicking Google ads, and to my dear sister, who was kind enough to use my Amazon links to order my birthday present. Yay Michelle!

Does your immediate or extended family know about your blog? If so, do they read it? If not, why?

They do read it, which is great for me. A) It gets everyone up to date on the latest without daily phone calls. B) I’ve sometimes struggled with honesty. In person, I can occasionally not say what I’m thinking. So, I think a lot about my posts, how my family will receive them. I want them to know me. I want to be as open as I can. And I want them to still like me. Same goes for strangers. It’s an interesting challenge, to honestly be who I am, and let people have their opinions. Which leads to C) It forces me to grow a thicker skin.

What two pieces of advice would you give to a new blogger?

1) Use a pseudonym.

2) Familiarize yourself with how to get the Googlebots to focus where you want (if you’re going to have Google ads on your site). Insert this code around the RELEVANT text:

<!–googlead_sectionstart –> <!– googlead_sectionend –>

Because a series of blog entries can seem disconnected from each other, the bots throw up their hands, and sometimes you get ads for pharmaceutical companies instead (I know of what I speak).

{Taking a page from the Brillig handbook, and hoping to introduce myself, here is a post, reprinted from my personal blog, about what got me into this whole pregnancy thing in the first place...}

knowing and not knowing, yet

If I’m not pregnant, then this is a mean case of PMS.

Heartburn, breast tenderness. Bolted awake at 1:45 a.m. with the absolute certainty of it.

I’ve only told four friends so far that this is even a possibility. One, having just witnessed the two-year fight another friend my age had with infertility issues, leading to four rounds of IVF, and finally, twins, was skeptical to say the least. I told her I thought I had symptoms. That things felt… different.

I understand her response. I was saying these things barely a week after we’d done the do. And at my age… And even this morning’s certainty could be somewhere between fantasy and peri-menopause, but I doubt it.

For the moment, and to do something with my insomnia I return to the story…

In the days leading up to March 4, we talked about my “deadline.”

Scott said he thought our “wait a year” scenario meant that in a year we would start TALKING about having a baby. I realized my scenario had been that we would start TRYING.

I told him about my fear that I am getting too old to do this. I’ve read articles about my eggs being too old, men his age or slightly older having increased risk of autistic offspring… and then there’s just this FEELING. I can’t explain it. Like my job is to GET PREGNANT IN MARCH. All lit up in neon letters inside my head.

When I try to imagine it happening in April, I just feel empty.

And I admitted to him the most embarrassing thing of all. Last summer, a scant four months after our wedding, I had an astrology reading. The astrologer, a woman living at the ranch where I was staying and attending a three-week theater training, drew up my chart, and Scott’s, and the one for our relationship — based on the date and time of our wedding.

She said a lot of things. Nice things. That my chart is full of indicators that my career is in communication (theater, writing, it’s all there). That Scott’s financial picture is set to improve, probably in some way relating to his toy making or collecting; that our relationship is a good one, has a strong bond, that our relationship will be of service.

And she said she saw two children. She said we would have a girl, born in December (although she didn’t say what year). A Sagittarius. And she would be very wise…

Jump to — Sunday, March 4, 2007. Scott wakes up with the sexiest glint in his eye. It’s the morning after I’ve performed in my best improvisational theater show since he’s known me. I feel good, relieved, relaxed. He’s more attractive to me than ever. For about a week, this incredible gratitude/love fog has been building, curling around us, making everything, especially Scott, pretty and soft-focus and full of gooey love-ness. One of these bouts I have where all the doubts and fears melt away and I’m just glad he’s mine.

He asks me where I am in my cycle. We’ve been using natural family planning for almost three years now, glove off during “safe” weeks, and then on during the weeks before and after the average ovulation date. I’m due to ovulate on Wednesday, I tell him.

He says, “Do you want to do this?”

I hesitate.

He says, “Let’s be brave.”

Brave.

It’s some of the best sex we’ve ever had. Baby-making sex. Like all of the intention just wrapped itself around… let’s just say it felt really good.

And I got up right after and went to the bathroom, like I usually do. No lying around with a pillow under my hips. No nothing. Because we weren’t really “trying.” We were playing at trying.

And since we’d already played at trying once, we did it again that night. I think we may have joked about giving the oracle a chance to be right.

And then the doubt settled in again. By Monday, we agreed we’d wait till next month. That we needed just a little more time to plan, to get used to the idea. For God’s sake, I hadn’t even read a book on the subject yet.

That afternoon, I called my high school best friend and told her about our trying/not trying. She said, “Are you taking prenatal vitamins?”

On Tuesday, I bought prenatal vitamins and two slim books about pregnancy from the health food store near our house. I was testing myself. If I’m serious about all this business, I’d better show up and start acting responsibly. I took the first dose of vitamins as soon as I got home.

Wednesday, the glove was back on. We debated it again, briefly. Agreed that we weren’t REALLY ready.

It wasn’t as much fun as baby-making sex. It felt a little sad.

Somehow with all my fertility charting knowledge and high I.Q., I had decided that Wednesday, March 7, the big ovulation day that month — mucous and all, was the only REAL fertile day. That on Sunday, we’d just played at the edge of fire but hadn’t gotten close enough to really…

On Thursday, March 8, I started this journal and then went for a walk with a friend, grilling her on baby-related topics (her son is 20 months). How did you decide to have a baby?

She described a pushme-pullyou of one person being ready and then the other and then one feeling not so ready and then feeling ready and then the other and meanwhile baby-making sex was awfully fun and then, one time she thought she was pregnant and when she found out she wasn’t she was very disappointed and that’s how she knew and then BOOM. And voilá.

I also asked her how much it costs to have a baby. And here’s what she told me:

Doula: $900.00
Hospital bill: $25,000 (insurance covers most of this, but still shows you what they did for you.)
Daycare: $325/month
Diapers: $45/month
Psychic Chiropractor appointments: $75/week
Photo processing: ???

She says you end up spending a lot of money on photo processing.

The weekend went by fairly uneventfully; except for by then I had already started trying to follow the dietary recommendations I’d read in one of my new books. I suspected something was up, and if not, it was good practice…

Sunday night, March 11, looking at a graph in the third pregnancy book I’d bought, I finally put it together.

I’m sitting in the bedroom knitting. Scott is in his office, working on his toy “displaysets” project. I have the urge to call him into the bedroom, just to let him KNOW. Just so we’re not in denial about this. That having sex two days BEFORE ovulation is like, well, umm, the optimal time for getting me pregnant.

But as is the case with most urges I have while knitting (hunger, thirst, needing to go to the bathroom), it gets subsumed by the hypnotic activity of the needles, and by the time he comes to bed, I forget to say anything.

On Monday, March 12, I go to see my psychic chiropractor. I tell her what’s been going on. She arm tests me, asking my body, if I am pregnant. The answer comes back: Yes.

(NOTE: I will occasionally refer in my posts to my “psychic chiropractor,” which is probably a very reductionist way of describing what she does. Although she does do a non-force type of chiropractic, and she is psychic. She is also a holistic healing practitioner.)

I start to cry. Because we hadn’t really MEANT to have a baby yet, had we? I wanted us to be all full of INTENTION when we did it.

She explained that at this stage, all she was confirming was a meeting of the gametes, that implantation hadn’t happened yet, and might not. And so I took a little comfort. Because we aren’t ready. We don’t even balance our checkbooks. HOW ARE WE GOING TO DO THIS?

Then again, she says, most people aren’t ready when it happens.

March 15, 2007. I pick Scott up from work. His colleague walks out just as we’re pulling away, waves us down. We stop. He comes to the window to chat. He says that another colleague of theirs had emailed him today, saying she’d had a premonition about Scott and I and “a little chili, a bambino.”

For a moment, I’m confused. Our cat Bambino was eating chili in her psychic vision? What does that have to do with us? … Oh! I look at Scott’s co-worker, eyes wide, and admit nothing. As we are pulling away, I say, “If this turns out to be true, we have to rewind to this moment and tell him.”

I can’t officially take a pregnancy test, and hope for any kind of reliable result, until the close to the day my period is due. We have two tests in the bathroom cabinet. Earlier tonight, we agreed I’d take one on Sunday, March 18, 2007, our anniversary, three days before my red-letter day, which gives the test about a 70% chance of being accurate. We can always test again on the 21st.

{Taking a page from the Brillig handbook, and hoping to introduce myself, here is a post, reprinted from my personal blog, about what got me into this whole pregnancy thing in the first place...}

how it began

Already, almost a week has gone by since our minds changed, and so much detail has been lost.

These are the things I’ve noted:

This morning I woke up to catching a glimpse of Scott’s red plaid flannel clad butt as he was bending over in the backyard, pulling up dandelions, at 7:00 a.m.

This — à propos of his comment yesterday, as we were lying on the bed looking out the sliding glass door at said dandelions: “How can I take care of a baby if I can’t even take care of the yard?”

I guess we have 9 months to practice weeding, or 10, or…?

On March 18, 2006 we got married.

Around that time, we made a deal with each other about “the kid thing” (a thing being something you can dangle at a distance from yourself with the tips of your fingers, something you can be in denial about). We said to ourselves, each other, and everyone who asked, that we were going to “wait a year.”What does “wait a year” mean, exactly?

To me, apparently, it meant that on March 18, 2007, or close to it, the glove would come off.

I didn’t quite realize how deeply that intention had taken root in my subconscious. The first clue came in January, when I started having crying fits whenever the subject of kids would come up, or seemingly not come up but I’d find a way to tie it in, and blame Scott.

Like this: I applied for a full-time job in San Francisco, and had my first interview. I came home in a little bit of a mood. Remember, this is January. We haven’t had hardly any conversations about if or when we want to be parents, except to admit to each other that we’re both feeling a little ambivalent and a lot scared.

So he asks me about the interview, if I think I’ll want the job. I say something or other, but meanwhile, inside, a storm is brewing. By 10:00 that night, I’m wound in a tight ball, on the bed, so angry at Scott I can’t even look at him, much less explain why. I’m crying like he’s never seen me cry. Wailing. I catch my breath. He asks. I still can’t say it. I cry some more.

Finally, I get the power, courage, breath to explain to him that I’m upset because his encouraging comments about me getting a full-time job mean that he doesn’t want me to get pregnant and take care of a child. I had wanted him to tell me that I should only look for part-time work. Of course, he hadn’t gotten the psychic memo.

A few weird confluences in January:

I started working two new clients, almost simultaneously: one, a parenting magazine hiring me to edit parent blogs, the pediatrician Q&A columns, and other ephemera; and the other, grant-writing for a family-planning services organization.

Nothing like a little outside nudging to get one’s mind where the universe seems to want it to be.

Around that time, I had also started having conversations with friends, expressing my strong STRONG ambivalence about having kids. Do I want them? I can hardly say the words — ggggget pppppppregnan…t??? What?

I started to doubt my relationship with Scott. Sure, marriage is one thing, and the bill for our wedding alone is enough to guilt me into making this work, and yes, we have the house we bought together, the mortgage we struggle to pay, but a kid? That’s really commitment. Can I take a lifetime with this guy? This messy, irritating, absentminded, goofy guy?

I didn’t realize it yet, but the deadline was working its magic, pushing all of my doubts, worries, and fears to the surface, like two thumbnails on a zit.

So a friend suggested I call this therapist who specializes in helping people who feel ambivalent about becoming parents. I had a phone interview with her the week my other two baby jobs started.

She asked me how Scott felt about having kids. I told her that he was worried about the financial burden, the loss of freedom, sharing me with someone else, and birth defects.

When she asked me how I felt, I just froze. I didn’t know how I felt. Except for being pretty sure that I don’t have TIME to feel ambivalent….

Of course, I cried.

She explained that she doesn’t work with couples, but rather with the more ambivalent partner. But which one of us was that? I decided, given how I’d reacted to her questions, that probably I was the one who was more ambivalent.

I discussed the conversation with Scott and he agreed. We’d send me to see the ambivalence lady.

But I was less than ambivalent about paying her $1600 for the prescribed 12 weeks of therapy. Even though it would have concluded nicely in time for my “glove-off” deadline.

That was another sign — that I was counting the weeks to see if her schedule fit my “schedule.”

And when I thought about it a bit more, about why she sees the more ambivalent one, it dawned on me that maybe it was Scott who was waffling, and that I was merely meeting his waffle. That I was being codependent, somewhat, and also reacting — if he’s not wanting the “thing” then how could I?

Plus, the fact that both of us hadn’t had steady work in six months wasn’t helping either of us in the confidence about the future department.

So we kept talking. And as we talked, we became more and more sure — in odd, funny ways:

We’re driving along and we spot a hot rod car. Scott says, “If you have that car, you can’t have a baby. Car or Baby?”

“Baby,” I answer.

“Wow, he says, you said that like you meant it.”

“Yeah, I do. I did. I don’t know.”

We’re at the farmer’s market and we see a kid wearing a Batman costume (superheroes being the mettle of my mate’s heart), and then we see a really cute dog. So I say, “Dog or Kid?” And he says “Kid,” and I say, “Wow, you said that like you meant it. Why?”

And he says, “Because you can dress a kid up in a batman costume.”

And I say, “Yes, but you can do that to a dog too.”

And he says, “Yes, but the dog wouldn’t enjoy it.”