I've been sleeping with Willie Nelson

This is Willie Nelson.

Willie was for sale for $1 at a junk shop, which seemed like a bargain for what I think is an endangered species.  The slight odour of old ladies and their cigarettes was just a free bonus.  We’re a bit worried we’ll get stopped trying to get into national parks since they don’t allow dogs and cats, but so far there haven’t been any issues.  Eric is already displaying his tendency to be a protective father; we were discussing getting some fly nets so that we could leave the back door open, but Eric is concerned Willie will try to escape.

It’s been a week of nature encounters that people probably think happen every day in Australia.  Our last night on the Fleurieu Peninsula we camped at a beach with a flock of at least 200 galahs.  Galahs are my favourite bird, basically a pink cockatoo.  I probably only see a few a month most of the time, and I’ve never seen more than a few together.  Like cockatoos, they have such personality, and I just watched them chase and preen each other for ages.  I never got bird watchers in the US, but Australia has the most amazing, brightly coloured, exotic birds just hanging around. 

After a brief visit to the lovely beaches just south of Adelaide, we moved on to the Yorke Peninsula, where we are concerned there might have been a zombie invasion.  Most of the peninsula is just brown, barren farm land, and we kept driving through villages with absolutely no sign of life.  For two nights we camped on our own private beach infested with seals and dolphins.  I spent part of a day wandering up and down the beach in my bra and underwear – somehow my bikini doesn’t fit so well these days – confident only animal eyes could see me.  Anyway, the seals were engaged in some kind of orgy just off the beach, so I’m pretty sure they weren’t paying attention.

Next we stayed at Innes National Park for two nights, where we saw exactly one other couple and a handful of surfers.  Eric has been making me play frisbee with him every evening, and one night a small mob of kangaroo crept closer and closer throughout our game.  It was pretty clear they wanted to play but were trying to figure out why I kept throwing the thing into trees and bushes.  Before he hopped off, the big guy couldn’t have been more than 10 feet away from me.

The area is also full of emus.  You can't drive too quickly, because they loiter in the middle of the road and aren't alarmed at all at vans speeding toward them.  We were on a hike one afternoon and came upon two in the middle of the trail.  They're quite big and intimidating, so we gave them time to finish pecking at the ground and move along.  

The best, though, was when Eric was surfing one morning.  The biggest pod of dolphins I’ve ever seen, at least 50 or 60 of them, was cruising up and down the long beach, fishing, surfing, and just generally carrying on.  At one point, at least 30 of them caught a single wave together, and they looked like they were flying.  I watched from the beach as they worked their way slowly toward Eric, expecting that they’d avoid him by at least a few feet, but they didn’t seem to take any notice of him as they swam all around and under him.  It was amazing to watch, although I think I would have been at least a little bit nervous.  That’s just a lot of animal flesh.  Eric said he almost fell off his board and was worried he’d hit one and frighten it.

It’s tough watching from the sidelines.  We left the bikes in Melbourne since we figured my days on a road bike with tiny tires and clip in pedals were limited, and the pump, kit, shoes, etc. take up a lot of space.  We also left behind my surfboard and wetsuits, neither of which I could get into at this point anyway.  I’ve never been the girlie who watched from the beach; it’s a lame role, and I don’t even look good in a bikini while I’m doing it. 

Being jealous that I couldn’t be in the water molesting sea life lead to a general bout of feeling sorry for myself.  One of the things I worried about before falling pregnant was losing my identity, a lot of which is wrapped up in the things that I do.  I just don’t see that I’m going to fit in ten hours or more on the bike a week once I have an infant hanging off my boob.  If my boobs get much bigger than this while breastfeeding, I’ll fall off the damn bike anyway.

 It seems like after you have a baby you go from being “Mary” to “Sea Monkey’s Mum”.  I’m sure that is its own wonderful, fulfilling thing, but it’s a bit hard to imagine at the moment.  I know it sounds selfish, but I can’t imagine I’m the only expectant mother to have the occasional moment of panic about what life is like on the other side.

Of course, it’s not like I’d change anything either.  At the moment, we’re about an hour away from our 12 week ultrasound.  I’ve been counting the days since we made the appointment 2.5 weeks ago, and I tossed and turned all night.  Again, I can’t be the only crazy pregnant lady who lives in fear of finding out that the little guy has given up in there.  Of my five friends who have had babies in the last year or are currently pregnant, that’s happened to two of them.  Both of those amazing ladies rebounded and had healthy second pregnancies, but I’m not sure I can go through this whole thing again if this one doesn’t work out.  After my last post, I’ve had some pretty rough days again, and I have to say I really hate being pregnant.  Like, a lot.  I was walking back to the van from a campground pit toilet one rough evening last week and saw a jagged piece of glass lying in the grass.  I never would have done it, but I had a brief glimpse of why people cut themselves just to feel something else.

Well, that ended on a downer.  Sorry about that.  I’m really not mentally ill.  Well, not any more than usual.  I’m probably just missing Willie Nelson, who we left in the van since we’re staying in a hotel in Adelaide near the doctor’s office. 

***UPDATE***

The doctors' appointments went much better than expected and definitely gave me a little boost.  It's unbelievable how much detail they can show in an ultrasound for something that is only the size of a peach.  We saw arms, legs, a brain, the spine and ribs, a cute little button nose.  Sea Monkey had two fists trying to punch his/her way out, but I reckon that was a reaction to being constrained for over an hour by my very full bladder.  It's creepy to me that it's always in there, though, even when we're not peeking at it.  It's a good thing it's not very smart yet, or I'd have to swallow a book.

By the afternoon appointment, they had already combined the results from the blood tests and the ultrasound to give us a risk assessment for various chromosomal abnormalities, including Down's syndrome.  Typically, you're considered high risk if you're over 35, and since I turn 36 in 10 days, I'm right on the boundary.  If the  risk assessment at 12 weeks indicates a high likelihood of abnormalities, the next step is to have a giant needle stuck into the womb closer to 20 weeks.  Unfortunately, that carries a 1/200 risk of inducing a miscarriage, so you really only take that step if there are serious concerns.  

However, at a BBQ back in Melbourne, a doctor friend told us about this new blood test that extracts the baby's DNA from the mother's blood to safely test for abnormalities.  It's only been in use for about a year and is only available in the US, so it's not yet covered by Medicare, our national health insurance, and costs $1,250.  

We had lined up the referral to do that if our risk assessment was unfavourable, but the results looked really good.  For the three abnormalities assessed, the average risk of someone my age is about 1/300 babies born with an issue.  Mine was 1/3,000+.  I'd like to attribute that to years of getting up before sunrise to exercise, but it's probably just dumb luck.  Anyway, that's $1,250 we can spend on beer and blow now - hooray!

Our afternoon appointment was with the most thorough doctor we've seen yet.  We really appreciated all of the unsolicited information he provided and the additional time he spent talking with us, particularly as our appointment began 15 minutes before the office closed.  His wife had their first child a couple of years ago, so I think some things were fresh in his mind.  However, I reckon he had her encased in a giant bubble he pushed around.  He was not impressed at all with our plans and basically chastised us for being irresponsible.  We kind of expect that from every doctor, though, so we just had a good laugh after.  

The doctor would have been really unimpressed if he'd seen me last night trying to eat some dodgy cheese sauce that had been open without refrigeration for several days.  Eric jokingly said, "You need to start wanting to have this baby," which has been something of a constant line in the van today.

Since we are free of doctors for another month, we blew out Adelaide as quickly as we could and struck out into the Outback.  It's been a gorgeous two days of driving through open plains and red mountains up to Flinders Ranges.  I think it's the prettiest scenery we've seen so far, made even more dramatic by huge storms sweeping through.  Eric commented that this was what he expected Australia to look like, and then the little town where we stopped for coffee had a display listing all of the movies that were filmed nearby, including one of our favourites, Walkabout.  No wonder it looked familiar!  We're doing some hiking the next couple of days, so I'll have to post some photos then.