On blogging

I never thought that I would be a blogger.  I was a little slow coming to the internet in general.  Not that it existed in my most formative years, but still I resisted its place in my life for quite some time.  I remember the first time I heard the word blog was in early 2005.  I remember because I wrote about this discovery in an email to this really cool, starving artist-type guy I had recently met named Neal, and I confessed that I didn’t “get it.”  Why did people want to write meaningful, personal things and put them on the worldwide-web-internet-blogosphere for everyone to see?

It still surprises me how integral to my life blogs, both mine and others’, have become.  But it seems now like part of some grander scheme than I ever could have foreseen when I sort of stumbled upon creating this blog.  From a purely logistical standpoint, blogs have become one of my key channels to the outside world since I can’t get out much and Neal’s work schedule necessitates him having the phone most days (we just have the one).  But more importantly, blogging has become this critical part of my internal processing mechanism.  I have these million thoughts everyday because mind work is all I have energy for much of the time, and most of them should never see the light of day.  Is this blog-worthy? has become a useful question to help me sift through and determine those things better left unexplored.

But even more transcendent than those advantages is the relational aspect of it all.  Over the course of the last few months, as I’ve written  about so many personal things, I have been amazed by the comments I’ve received.  They have been affirming, inspired, loving, kind, everything that all our relationships ought to be all the time — but too often fall short.  I think about the fact that some people who read my blog and send timely thoughts are people that I haven’t seen for years, some that I may never cross paths with again.  And yet, they’ve strengthened and succored me through the bad and rejoiced with me over the good.

I’ve thought often about the first very personal post I ever wrote about my miscarriage and how long I wavered about whether to actually put it out there.  But then how swiftly I knew that I had made the right decision; that feeling heard and understood by other women would prove an integral part of my healing process.

All that is to say that it’s a humbling thing to realize just how many paths God will use to send help when we need it most.  And this path, this blogging thing, has surely been a godsend for me.

Facing my childbirth fears

Last night was the roughest night I’ve had in about three weeks.  Pain + intense itching + hunger + heartburn + nausea = very long night and definitely no church this morning.  But it is a good reminder of how difficult most of this pregnancy has been.  There is that old wives’ tale about how when the baby comes you forget all about how hard and painful it all was . . . well, I don’t have my baby yet, but I think I was beginning to have that experience already.  In so many ways weeks 36-39 have been the easiest of the whole pregnancy and I started to think, was it really as hard as I thought it was? Maybe it wasn’t that bad. At which point, Neal wants to have me committed because, um, yes, it was that bad.

The upside of this sick, can’t-get-out-of-bed day is that I will finally finish this post on my childbirth fears for those who were left hanging.

So as I was saying . . .

Birthing from Within is the last childbirth book I’m reading (I promise, Neal ) and overall, it has been the most helpful — even if just for page 7 alone.  It outlines a short list of questions to help you confront and deal with your fears and worries.  This straightforward, logical approach has felt like the final piece in all my preparation.  Paraphrasing from the book, I’ve asked myself:

• What do I worry about or fear?
• What would I do if this worry/fear occurred?
• What would it mean about me as a mother if it happened?
• What can I do to prepare for or prevent it?

This paradigm has helped me to identify and dissect my emotions and psychologically prepare for what will happen if my fears come to pass.  I have felt empowered by this process, knowing that I’ve pursued whatever preventative measures I can.

I think I’ve had three primary fears (related to labor/delivery itself, not pregnancy — that post would be a novel and probably too traumatic for me to ever write it all out!):

1. Having a c-section
2. Perineal tearing
3. Lacking the necessary stamina

About two or three months ago, a cesarean seemed like THE worst case scenario to me . . . something so different from what I wanted that it would be devastating.  But I’ve got to say that having abdominal surgery at 7 months pretty much took the mystery out of it for me.  I had started reading The Essential C-Section Guide just prior to the appendectomy and when I came back to finish it after the surgery, the medical procedures and physiologic healing processes were just about identical to what I was experiencing.  Of course, the physical process itself is a small part of why many women don’t want c-sections — the emotional component is huge.  I feel extremely blessed to have an aunt and a very close friend who both had unplanned c-sections and were willing to talk with me about the emotional trial it was for them.  When you combine all that, I think I have come to a good place where if a cesarean became necessary, I could deal with that, knowing that I would have some wise and sensitive women to help me through it.

Perineal tearing is actually tops on Neal’s list.  He doesn’t mind medical interventions, so the idea of me having an epidural or cesarean doesn’t bother him.  But when he heard what 3rd and 4th degree tears were, he pretty much wanted to curl up and die.  Obviously, some degree of tearing is very common in first-time moms, so it’s not a fear that carries so much emotional baggage for me.  But asking myself these questions and doing all I can to prevent it has given me greater peace of mind.  So that means Kegels and perineal massage now (with the help of a little bird named Neal that doesn’t want any physical part of these preparations, but constantly checks up on me — we’ve finally found something that Neal has genuine anxiety about!) and using warm compresses during labor.

This last one is the biggie for me because it is so tied to my overall health, which if you haven’t heard, leaves something to be desired.  Even though I really believe that my body can do this, I would be lying if there wasn’t part of me (a very emotionally-charged part) that thinks my body can’t do much of anything right — and why would this be an exception.  In many ways, I don’t really fit the “natural childbirth” profile . . . I don’t run marathons; I’m not a health-food guru; I don’t even get a high from exercise.  Have I mentioned I like to lay still and not move as much as possible?!  Pretty much everyone I personally know that has had an unmedicated labor or attempted one fits into one or more of those lifestyles and I have asked myself again and again, am I really tough enough for this?

At our last childbirth class, our doula Melissa said something that really helped to improve my perspective on this issue.  She told me that some of her clients who are very athletic struggle a lot during labor because they are unprepared for how emotional the process is, not just physical.  You can’t just force your way through it with pure physical exertion because there will be times when a gentler or more nuanced approach is necessary — and if you are always used to being the master of your own body, you may be in for a rude awakening when you can’t make your body do just what you want it to.  It really opened my eyes to a possible upside to my health history: I have had to learn to listen to and respect what my body is telling me, limitations and all.  Sometimes I have pushed myself, but my body always pushes back, reminding me that I am no master of it.  I hope that this will end up being a strength that I bring to the table, even though my body lacks some of the physical strength that others bring.

Of course, that hasn’t exempted me from trying to increase my physical strength and endurance as well.  This was a firm requirement Neal set out for me before I was even pregnant, from the first moment I even mentioned the kind of birth I wanted.  So first I took a ballet class last spring (I danced for all of childhood and adolescence, but my health and injuries brought that to an abrupt halt about 13 years ago).  If you don’t know, ballet is not for wimps.  It is a rigorous, full-body work-out if you’re doing it right.  When I did get pregnant and the horrid first trimester hit, ballet wasn’t a possibility anymore.  We were going to try swimming instead, but my skin condition made that an impossibility as well.

I started going to the BYU gym to use an elliptical because the no-impact motion is better for my joints than most work-out equipment, but soon my shifting center of gravity and light-headedness ruled that out as well.  I’ve been left with the stationary bike.  Not my first choice since bikes scare the pants off me (that’s a story for another day), but I tried to ride for 20-30 minutes, 3 times a week at the BYU gym.  After I had healed sufficiently from the appendectomy but still wasn’t able to leave the house, Neal bought a bike for $30 at D. I. (a local thrift store) and I’ve tried to make the investment worthwhile.  One and a half hours of exercise per week sounds pretty paltry when you compare it to about 160 hours of lying in bed, but I’ve gotta say that I feel pretty darn heroic when I manage it.  Kinda like her:

Do you think a headband like that would be motivating during labor?

So I may be naive, but I feel ready to do this thing.  Every account I read of childbirth has so many distinct elements, and I want to figure out what the end of our story is.  I want to know if after car accidents and neck surgery and appendicitis and fibromyalgia, childbirth really is the most intense pain I’ve ever experienced.  Most of all, I want this little girl in my arms, safe and sound.

Sacred space

We just finished packing the hospital bag.  Everything was pretty ho-hum, gathering toothbrushes and floss and such, until we got to the going-home outfit for baby.  I picked out a little pair of pants, a onesie, a jacket, a hat, socks — with about an 80% matching rate, which is really high for me and my underdeveloped fashion sense.

As I was putting them in the bag, the floodgates just opened.  I can’t believe she’s going to stop being inside and start being outside in three weeks or less.  Soon I get to hold her and dress her and saw down her nails with an emery board (I am only very confident about doing the first one well).  Thirty-nine weeks tomorrow . . . what a miracle.

My birth plan

Long post ALERT! (A new public service to my readers)

Those who saw Neal’s video interview at my baby shower know this little secret: I have read about a gajillion books, internet articles, and research studies about pregnancy and childbirth.

I’m not sure I would call it a new hobby; it has felt more like a compulsion, a prerequisite to understanding what on earth was going on with my body and mind.  Not that it ultimately told me all that much about my particular health concerns (in the end, the midwives, doctors, and specialists have all agreed that I do not have a “known condition” but rather a unique auto-immune response to pregnancy), but I think it created a touchstone for me to make some sense of difficult and confusing things.

When I first started talking to Neal about my birth plan, he was a bit incredulous — sort of asking, “Now what in the last few months (or your whole health history) makes you think things are going to go the way you want them to?”  Perhaps I am unreasonably optimistic, but I absolutely believe that I’m going to have a great labor and delivery.  Seriously.

I’ve hesitated a bit to write about this topic publicly because there’s a lot of strong opinions on all different sides, a lot of judgment passed, and a lot of hurt feelings for friends I know who didn’t get what they were hoping for.  But inasmuch as I’m chronicling my life and my thoughts on this blog, and this decision-making process has been predominant for me over the last year, I decided to write it down.

So I guess the most basic thing is that I’m planning an unmedicated labor and delivery.  There are so many reasons why this felt like the way to go for me (my body’s sometimes-unpredictable response to medications and emotional baggage from doctors/hospitals/mainstream medical community, chief among them), but fundamentally, I believe that my body knows how to do this.  As crazy as it sounds when you first think “I have to get something how big out of there?!,” I have felt such a confirmation that this is God’s design and that unnecessary intervention will hinder rather than assist what He has carefully constructed.  I feel peace knowing that even my somewhat-broken body was created to do this.

Because I don’t want a highly medicalized birth, my first choice was to give birth at home or at a birthing center.  Since our many twists and turns made that an unrealistic option, I had to turn my attention to simulating that environment as much as possible in the hospital.  Enter New Beginnings Nurse-Midwife Clinic.  The midwives are still pretty much in the medical mainstream and more ready to prescribe medication than I would prefer, but they also look at the pregnancy in a very holistic way and attend a lot of unmedicated births.  If they think getting me on my hands and knees to push would be helpful, they’re all for it – something that an epidural generally inhibits and few OBGYNs would consider.

This plan of mine also suggests a certain kind of hospital, which is one of the reasons I was ecstatic to get to the point in pregnancy where I could go to Orem Community Hospital (before 34 weeks, it would not have been safe because the NICU level was not adequate).  I have heard only rave reviews about Orem Community in terms of great labor and delivery nurses, more individualized attention, fewer institutional policies to speed up the laboring process, and all-in-one rooms for labor, delivery, recovery, and rooming-in with the baby.  I’m still pretty sure that I’m going to have some issues with the hospital, since I plan to decline some routine interventions “against medical advice” (like continuous electronic fetal monitoring and an IV), but it seems like the best option in light of our situation.

Next came our decision to hire a doula – a labor assistant that provides physical and emotional support.  Although my midwives are often there for a large part of the labor, rather than just delivery, there is a lot of convincing research (including randomized studies, the gold standard) demonstrating the positive effects of dedicated labor support above and beyond medical personnel.  As I got into the childbirth literature, I also began to feel that the pendulum has swung too far in terms of pressure on a husband to be the primary labor support.  Neal is as hands-on with my health as any husband could be, but as we’ve approached childbirth, I’ve realized how many emotions and fears he has connected to the process.  It seemed unrealistic to ask him to put his own feelings aside and just focus on me and my needs.  Enter our doula Melissa, who we felt instantly comfortable with and know will be a calming presence no matter what happens.  We also decided to have one of Melissa’s apprentices (she is a doula trainer) attend the birth because, let’s face it, why would you have only one person giving you a massage when you could have two for the same price?! (Remember, I’m a massage hooch ).

So that’s our birth location and our team, but most people who attempt an unmedicated birth also have a “method.”  This was actually the trickiest part for us, partly because of timing (few childbirth classes are offered over the December holidays, which would have been the right time according to an early February due date) and the uncertainty about when baby girl would come.  Ultimately, it has worked out fine because after reading books on Lamaze, Bradley, hypnobirthing, Birthing from Within, Ina May’s methods (oh, thank heavens for the public library or this compulsion would have broken us!) et al., I realized that I like an eclectic approach.  I don’t think I’m a strictly method person; rather I feel more comfortable compiling a toolbox of ideas, practicing them all, and seeing what helps in the moment.  Luckily, our doula Melissa also offers private childbirth classes from a similar perspective, compiling what she’s found to be best practices over 14 years in the field.

Even though I’m not sure at all what will prove most helpful in the moment, these things feel like good preparation:

• Progressive relaxation — every night Neal reads a script that walks me through measured breathing and focused relaxation.
• Supported squats — since squatting can be an effective way to help the baby descend, I really wanted to get comfortable with the position . . . and it’s a good thing we’ve practiced because man, those first few tries were AWK-WARD with a fat cow like me.  Neal enjoys showing me how easy it is for him to do!
• Hydrotherapy — warm water has helped me a lot with other pains and injuries, so I’ve assumed that it will play a key role in labor.  The only problem was that because of my skin condition, I haven’t been allowed to take baths throughout the pregnancy, so we’ve been working on ways to get comfortable in the bathtub now that I am packing 30 extra pounds.

So, wow, this is like a monster post . . . and I still had a few more things to write.  If you are not bored out of your mind by this topic, stay tuned for part two about facing my childbirth fears.

Cast your vote: Where should baby girl sleep?

It’s crunch-time now . . . the due date is in 11 days.  It’s time to get serious — and figure out just where we’re going to put this little bundle when she comes.

A: Closet under the stairs

Neal first suggested this and I thought it was utterly ridiculous — what kind of parent puts their child’s crib in a dark , unfinished closet under the stairs?!  Imagine my surprise when my mom came to visit and also suggested this location!!  (Neal = sweet vindication)

B: Neal’s room

I countered with the obvious choice, Neal’s room.  He has this nice little spot right next to his bed — my two babies sleeping side by side.

[My bedroom is, of course, out of the question, considering what a light sleeper I am.  Seriously, two nights ago at about 12:30am I woke up completely startled and jumped out of bed because I heard a HUGE crash in the bathroom and thought Neal had injured himself.  Turns out he dropped his plastic tooth-flosser on the tile.]

C: Hallway

Neal wasn’t too keen on the idea of his bedroom where he might be awakened by her every movement.  He suggested the hall outside his bedroom as a compromise.

D: Dresser drawer

But after more thought, Neal hit upon the perfect spot — a spacious drawer in our baby’s new dresser.  He swears up and down that he knows healthy, well-adjusted adults whose parents kept them in drawers as babies.  I think he is getting confused with a certain episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer houses Japanese tourists in a giant chest of drawers.

Care to weigh in?

Ninja baby redux

I haven’t given a ninja baby update for awhile.  And for good reason . . . I think she is just too cramped in there to show all her best moves.  Gone are her somersaulting days since the midwife told us she’d have to be superhuman to get her head out of my pelvis now.  But we still get a spectacular show every now and again when she somehow manages to shift my whole stomach from one side to the other à la Alien.

Despite this somewhat more subdued stage, I think it may just be my favorite in terms of baby movement because now she is directly responsive to whatever I’m doing.  So if I’m sick and bending over the porcelain goddess in our bathroom, I get a little foot or two pressing hard against my ribs as if to say, “Stop squishing me, Mom!”

Or if I push against her tiny feet wandering around the right side of my abdomen (sometimes for kicks, sometimes to save my incisions from irritation), she gets ever more determined (“No, I want my foot right there!”) and pushes back even harder.

The force is strong with this one.

***

I was well on my way to an outie belly button a couple of months ago, and I must admit that it was distressing me more than I expected.  It turns out that I loved my little innie more than I ever realized (oh, how vain I really am . . . first my nose, now this).  But there’s yet one more unexpected perk of the appendectomy — they stitched right over my belly button, quickly restoring my innie status.  A new, quick, cosmetic remedy for pregnant women who fear the outie???

***

Now that we’re so close to delivery, I get a lot of questions about whether I’m getting impatient for her to make her debut.  And the answer is mostly no.  Sure it’s not so easy to maneuver these days, and when I have my long, itchy nights I think how much better it would be if I could be looking at her and holding her.

But this other part of me doesn’t want to let go of these moments where we are so intimately connected.  I feel every movement she makes now and someday soon, she will have a life outside of me, away from me.  I have this sense that even when I’m staring at her or hugging her, I will still miss her in some manner — miss the things that we went through together.  She will go through things on her own, no doubt sooner than I can even imagine.

The other part, too, is that ever-hovering possibility that this is the last pregnancy for us.  I feel pretty sure we’ll have another child one way or another, but there are enough question marks to make us doubt that another biological child is the right choice for us.  I guess I just want to savor these moments . . . make sure I’ve learned the things that I needed to learn, felt the things that were there for me to feel, recognized the miracle of it all.

Making up for lost time . . .

Through most of the pregnancy, I have been on the low end of the expected weight gain.  My midwives were not too worried about it because I was still measuring okay.  But after the appendectomy, I lost a fair amount of weight and was quite a bit under the recommended guidelines as well as measuring behind schedule.  It wasn’t that surprising — clear liquid diets and abdominal surgery tend to have a weight loss effect — but they told me I needed to kick it up a notch.

It seemed virtually impossible to me because I was so nauseated all the time and throwing up a fair bit too.  But from week 34 to week 36, I started to deliver BIG time: 6 pounds in 2 weeks.  I hardly thought I could top that until my 37-week weigh-in last week: 5 pounds in 1 week, bringing my total weight gain up to 30 pounds!!

At this rate, I’m gonna best Neal by 60 pounds when this is all said-and-done.  Yep, that’s right, now I’m LARGE and IN CHARGE!  Maybe even closing in on “fat cow” status?  What do you think??

32.5 weeks (22 Dec)

37 weeks (23 Jan)

My political education

There was actually more that I wanted to say about politics in general yesterday, but Neal’s super strict bedtime rules got in the way of my more philosophical ramblings.  Ah, but you were not spared forever because I still just feel like talking about it — and I’ve got a lot of time on my hands!

I think I was destined to love all things political from an early age, considering that my birthday falls on election day every six years or so.  Good ole November 3rd has seen the elections of Presidents Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, Franklin Roosevelt, William Taft, and Ulysses Grant.  So glamorous, I know .

I was always sort of itching to move to Washington, D.C. and get in the middle of all that action, so in 2002, I did [I can't believe it was 8 years ago -- it doesn't seem that long ago!!].  It was in that first summer in D.C. that I started to notice something most distressing about politics.

See, I was going from this very conservative BYU environment and a largely conservative extended family, to work at a partner organization of the ACLU called D.C. Prisoners Legal Services Project, and I was getting everything from questioning looks to serious vitriol directed at me [no doubt some of my readers also consider the ACLU to be a dirty word and will sympathize with my detractors ].  They (that great, amorphous group of conservatives and Republicans) could not understand why I would want to devote my time to such a cause and align myself with such of group of God-less heathens.  And then I spent my entire run in D.C., about 4 years all told, working in the non-profit sector with extremely liberal people, and they (that great, amorphous group of liberals and Democrats) couldn’t understand how I could associate with such a group of God-clinging, Bush-voting idiots.

I guess I’ve come to realize that this is not just the story of politics, but of human nature: when we come to a conclusion about what is right or best, we cannot really understand how others could come to the opposite conclusion.  We can’t just conclude that they have an equally valid opinion and agree to differ, we often can’t even just think that they are wrong about this particular issue . . . all too often we must assume that they are bad or ill-intentioned, evil or stupid.  Lest you think I’m putting myself outside of this cycle, I catch myself waging this internal battle daily.

Human nature or not, it’s what I’ve come to loathe about politics.  I watch these seemingly intelligent, well-intentioned politicians come to opposite conclusions on every. single. thing.  And they can’t begin to make allowances for how anyone could differ from them.  Now I do not believe that all politicians are incapable of this type of nuanced understanding or goodwill toward others, but I do think that our system seems to demand a sort of black-and-white, good-and-evil interpretation of everything and everybody when we are in the thick of a campaign.  And sadly, we are always in the thick of a campaign in this age of 24-hour news.

I truly mourn for what a political campaign does to people, which in my observation is turn them into the worst possible versions of themselves.  To me, John McCain is a perfect example.  There is much to admire about him . . . heck, the prisoner-of-war thing alone should qualify him as a national hero.  And I watched his political career and applauded much of it for some time.  Then he became the Republican presidential nominee in 2008 and it saddened me to see him look like a lesser man than I believe he is.

I think George Stephanopoulos wrote about this complicated relationship with politics as eloquently as I’ve ever read in his book All Too Human: A Political Education about his years on the Clinton campaign and in the White House [I wish I could have found a good picture of the book cover to paste in here because, it's true, I think George is dreamy ].  He chronicles what became a sort of rude awakening . . . he was an idealist who thought that serving Bill Clinton was this grand, great thing that would make the country better.  And he was willing to sacrifice mightily for that dream.  But in the face of Clinton’s many indiscretions, he was left to “question whether helping him get elected was the best thing I ever did — or the worst.”

For a long time, I thought that I would work in the political realm in some capacity.  It seemed to be my great passion.  But reading George’s book was sobering for my idealistic younger self.  I did not ever want to say what Vince Foster, another Clinton advisor during the first term, said just weeks before he committed suicide, “Before we came here, we thought of ourselves as good people.”

The day after

I haven’t talked politics much on this blog, which is a bit surprising if you know that I spend A LOT of time reading about and following politics.  Probably the main reason is that I have some VERY opinionated friends on both sides of the aisle, and after living in D.C. for a while I sort of decided that life was generally less-angsty if I gave my political rants only to Neal.  Oh, Neal has all the luck!

But since everyone and their dog was facebooking or blogging about the Senate race in Massachusetts today, I thought maybe I would too.  After all, it is my blog . . . no one is forcing you to read it.

Based on the reactions I read from my friends across the spectrum, I must say that I feel in the minority because I’m not really sure what I think about this anomalous event — a Republican senator from Mass.  I’m a little amused by the irony: after 46 years Ted Kennedy’s seat goes to a guy who might kill the cause for which Kennedy fought.  I am no great Kennedy fan, despite his excellent record on prison reform, and I sort of loathe the whole Kennedy-dynasty thing, so yes, I’m slightly amused.  But beyond that, I feel very much conflicted, which probably perfectly describes my whole relationship to politics over the last decade.  Is this the lot of moderate, independent voters?  Anyone with me on this??

I have to say that the Republican Party makes my stomach turn even a little bit more than the Democratic Party, and yet, some of the issues that are most important to me, like abortion, make me lean Republican in national elections.  This health care thing, though, has me in quite a quandary.  Do I think we have major problems with our health care system in the United States?  Uh, yeah . . . would anyone dispute this?!  Am I thrilled with how the Democratic Party has handled reform?  No; though I also don’t think passage of their bills would usher in Armageddon the way some people do.  Do I think the Republicans have better ideas?  No; I agree with some of their positions, like malpractice reform is a good idea, but seriously, you can’t mount meaningful health care reform on the platform of “trial lawyers suck.”  I just don’t think the data supports that this is the issue in health care the way some Republicans seem to.  So the long and short of it is that I’m not sure yet if Brown’s election will make health care reform better or worse.  A more bipartisan bill could be good, but if health care legislation goes away altogether — as it has so many times in the past — I will rue the day Brown was elected.

Momentous events!!

I made this!!

Well, not this exactly, but a stir-fry.  The noodles and sauce came from a package, but I decided to add chicken and broccoli to make it more nutritious.  Seriously, I cooked a meal AND added additional items without the guidance of a recipe — and it was well-balanced to boot.

Number of nights I’ve slept for at least 8 hours!!

It is ridiculous!!  I’m actually not even sure if I’ve ever done that in my life (I’m a very bad sleeper in general, kind of an insomniac).  God bless Phenergan!!  God bless my midwife for suggesting it!!

In the days before I got the new anti-nausea meds (because of some insurance hassles, it was a week-long process), I jokingly wrote this to a friend:

By tomorrow I think I’ll be like a whole new woman.  What do you think the chances are?

Well, I totally am!  Who knew???  Not that anyone else could tell the difference because I am still spending about 22 hours a day in bed, but emotionally and physically I can feel a huge difference.  My body is getting stronger and I can weather the ups and downs with more equanimity.

Have I exceeded the number of exclamation points allowed in one blog post, do you think?!