There is a sizeable bunch of new photos of Ingrid in the gallery. My initial plan to post photos weekly did not survive, but I will try to post at least bi-weekly from now on.
The weather has turned to spring with no warning and great speed, catching me unawares and unequipped. (Not that I’m complaining – I love this weather!)
My own “normal” clothes are all still in the attic; all I have hanging in the wardrobe is fleece skirts and a single pair of trousers that sort of fit. Everything else was packed away last spring when my belly started growing. Time for some attic-digging.
Ingrid, likewise, has a nice thick jacket and fleece trousers, but almost no clothes suited for this weather. We need to do some urgent shopping there. I’m impatiently waiting for some bodies I ordered from BeamingBaby – they’re supposedly cut to fit over cloth nappies. If those sit well, I’ll order trousers from the same place as well.
These are my notes from reading Lise Elliot’s What’s Going On in There?.
“How Birth Affects the Brain”.
This chapter describes the effects on the baby of labour, birth, and the drugs used in childbirth. The drugs, while beneficial for the mother, are probably overused from the baby’s point of view.
In general women today are quite careful about what they put in their bodies during pregnancy, so it can seem a little odd that many lose all caution on the last day of gestation, just when the baby is making the difficult transition to surviving on his own and will no longer have the benefit of his mother’s circulation to clear drugs out of his system. […] All analgesics and anesthetics used in childbirth are serious controlled substances, in another league entirely from the occasional Tylenol or antihistamine that many women worry about during pregnancy.
A few interesting facts I learned:
- The birth itself may be triggered by the brain of the baby. That’s how it works in some other species.
- Stress hormones, which speed up breathing and heart rate in adults, have the opposite effect in babies, which helps them conserve oxygen during birth. They also give some last-minute help to mature baby’s lungs.
- For some reason, they don’t use nitrous oxide for pain relief in the US – it isn’t even mentioned in this chapter!
With most skills, once Ingrid’s learned them, she doesn’t lose them. But rolling over seems to be different. She has been learning and re-learning it for the last 6 weeks. First she managed to do it in one direction (front to back, I think it was). Then she abandoned that and learned the other direction, and spent a good while doing that and “requesting” to be turned back all the time. Then she took a week’s break from both. Then she recovered both skills at the same time, and then forgot them again…
Right now she’s in a phase where she has forgotten both again, which leads to a fair amount of frustration, because I’ve only got a 50% chance of putting her down the way she wants, and of course sometimes she changes her mind after a very short while.
Very curious behaviour!
(Short blog post today because the title character in my current book is in mortal peril, and if he survives his current problem he will have at least 2 more sets of people after his blood, and I desperately need to know how he will get through this all!)
There are some books that everyone knows something about, that somehow become more than books. Ulysses, A la recherche du temps perdu, Moby Dick, that sort of works. Books I’d like to have read just to know what all the fuss is about.
So I started reading Moby Dick through the ingenious DailyLit which sends you great works, in daily email snippets. Moby Dick comes in 252 snippets.
The first 50 snippets or thereabout were “normal” literature. At first I thought it seemed like a reasonably interesting book, even though the tone was a bit peculiar. And then it got strange. And then it got positively bizarre. But not in a good way. I was prepared for lots of talk about whaling and sea-faring, but that’s not what I got. But instead, Melville pontificates. And he rambles. And he lectures. And yet he manages to say nothing at all.
I am sorry to say that I gave up on the book after having read about a third of it, and will never try to read anything by Melville again.
The first third (or thereabouts) of snippet #69:
CHAPTER 35
The Mast-Head.
It was during the more pleasant weather, that in due rotation with the other seamen my first mast-head came round.
In most American whalemen the mast-heads are manned almost simultaneously with the vessel’s leaving her port; even though she may have fifteen thousand miles, and more, to sail ere reaching her proper cruising ground. And if, after a three, four, or five years’ voyage she is drawing nigh home with anything empty in her – say, an empty vial even – then, her mast-heads are kept manned to the last; and not till her skysail-poles sail in among the spires of the port, does she altogether relinquish the hope of capturing one whale more.
Now, as the business of standing mast-heads, ashore or afloat, is a very ancient and interesting one, let us in some measure expatiate here. I take it, that the earliest standers of mast-heads were the old Egyptians; because, in all my researches, I find none prior to them. For though their progenitors, the builders of Babel, must doubtless, by their tower, have intended to rear the loftiest mast-head in all Asia, or Africa either; yet (ere the final truck was put to it) as that great stone mast of theirs may be said to have gone by the board, in the dread gale of God’s wrath; therefore, we cannot give these Babel builders priority over the Egyptians.
And that the Egyptians were a nation of mast-head standers, is an assertion based upon the general belief among archaeologists, that the first pyramids were founded for astronomical purposes: a theory singularly supported by the peculiar stair-like formation of all four sides of those edifices; whereby, with prodigious long upliftings of their legs, those old astronomers were wont to mount to the apex, and sing out for new stars; even as the look-outs of a modern ship sing out for a sail, or a whale just bearing in sight. In Saint Stylites, the famous Christian hermit of old times, who built him a lofty stone pillar in the desert and spent the whole latter portion of his life on its summit, hoisting his food from the ground with a tackle; in him we have a remarkable instance of a dauntless stander-of-mast-heads; who was not to be driven from his place by fogs or frosts, rain, hail, or sleet; but valiantly facing everything out to the last, literally died at his post.
He manages to write 400 words saying just about nothing at all. Was he paid by the word? And those 400 words make up 8 (yes, eight) sentences. Just look at those sentences! More semicolons than you can count, and parenthetical asides that add nothing to the content, and all of it as bombastic as it could possibly be. Did he not have an editor?
“Let us in some measure expatiate here” perfectly describes the whole book. And honestly I cannot understand why anyone would want to read this.
Stardust is one of my favourite books ever, and by far the best thing that Neil Gaiman has written. I like his fairy tales (this, and Neverwhere and the Sandman stories) better than the (relatively) more conventional novels (Anansi Boys, American Gods). I don’t even know how many times I have read it.
Stardust is a fairy tale for adults. It starts in the village of Wall, which borders Faerie. A young man of the village, intent to woo a young woman, promises to bring her the star they both see fall in Faerie. Because he is by far not the only one to want that star, the quest turns out to be harder and take longer than he plans, and of course he goes through all sorts of adventures on his way – evil witches, magical objects, ghosts, long-lost princes, good deeds by strange strangers and all that.
And just as most traditional fairy tales – which were originally not aimed at children at all – this one definitely has moments that are not suited to small children. Cute animals die violent deaths, as do some less cute people.
Even though the book is small and short, even though it always retains its fairy tale feel, it is more complex by far than the traditional fairy tales. Gaiman moves smoothly from romance to horror to adventure. And the story meanders with him: there is no straightforward “boss battle” at the end, and the main characters aren’t even aware of all the dangerous forces surrounding them.
Character development also gets more attention than in a traditional fairy tale. They are complex, their emotions and relationships are non-trivial, and they learn and develop over time. The hero is neither a standard plucky-youngest-son-of-poor-peasant nor a standard courageous-dragon-slaying-prince. The heroine is not a gentle helpless maiden waiting to be rescued.
In addition, minor characters and conflicts are introduced and abandoned left and right. It gives the impression that this is a big world, of which we only see parts, and there just isn’t time to tell everyone’s story.
Somehow the book feels like poetry. This is the kind of fairy tale that makes me want to abandon my life and go on a quest in Faerie.
I re-read it now because we just acquired an illustrated version, with fabulous pictures by Charles Vess. In fact it isn’t fair to say that the book has pictures, because the pictures are an integral part and get as much loving attention as the text. For an adult book, this is pretty exceptional. If you are going to buy this book, do make sure you get the illustrated version – the pictures lifted the reading experience to a whole new level.
A movie adaptation of Stardust is on its way, and Neil Gaiman himself is happy about it and I cannot wait to see it.
These are my notes from reading Lise Elliot’s What’s Going On in There?.
“Prenatal Influences on the Developing Brain”.
This chapter goes through all the things that can affect the development of the fetus – mostly negatively. Nutrition (lack of), alcohol, drugs, chemicals, infections, stress, etc etc. On a more positive note there is a section about folic acid and how it helps prevent neural tube defects.
A few interesting facts I learned:
- There is enough folic acid in normal multivitamins for the needs of pregnant women. There is no evidence that the extra amount in specialist pills is useful (or unsafe, for that matter).
- A woman needs about 300 kcal extra per day during pregnancy, and 500–600 during breastfeeding.
Four weeks from today I’ll be going back to work.
Five months ago, half a year at home seemed like an eternity. Now all that time has somehow just disappeared.
I do look forward to working again. I can already feel my brain decaying from lack of activity. If this goes on much longer, I might get used to it… and then wake up 20 years from now and realise that I haven’t learned anything new for years.
These are my notes from reading Lise Elliot’s What’s Going On in There?.
“The Basic Biology of Brain Development”.
This chapter covers prenatal development of the brain and the nervous system, and an overview of the structure of nerve cells.
A few interesting facts I learned:
- The nervous system starts out flat as a pancake, then curls up into a groove, and then a tube.
- The brain cortex is made up of units perpendicular to its surface. More intelligent species have more grooves in their brains, and thus a larger surface.
- Initially too many connections are created between neurons, leading to noisy connections. This excess is pruned during early childhood.
These are my notes from reading Lise Elliot’s What’s Going On in There?.
Chapter 1, short and light, gives a brief overview of the nature/nurture issue, and explains the author’s reasons for writing this book.
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