I’ve popped 4 buttons off my winter coat since arriving in Germany. Starting with the ones over my belly. This could be due to the fact that I wear a Patagonia fleece under my winter coat for extra warmth, but I suspect it has something to do with TinyD. I didn’t bring a sewing kit, so for now, I’ll continue to look like a hobo in my coat that has a big gap at my belly and wait for my wonderful husband to sew the buttons back on when I get home. I bet the Amish don’t have this problem with their coats.

OK, tall is an exaggeration. But when I stand, I’m pretty sure I can feel s/he up by my navel. I still don’t stick out far enough for people to ask if I’m pregnant, but I’ve definitely changed shape.

I went to Ghent, Belgium on Friday and Saturday for a conference – the Belgian Society of Gastrointestinal Endoscopy. The conference was interesting on Saturday morning.

Friday evening included a ‘food tour’ of Ghent. The central area of Ghent includes many cathedrals and towers for various sorts. The stories that our guide told about each of the cathedrals and the castle we saw were great. A few of the good ones: the beer brewers were embarrassed because they couldn’t afford a steeple tower on their cathedral, so they lied to the town and said the foundation was weak – so no tower. Turns out they were right (using modern methods to assess), if they’d built their tower, the cathedral would have collapsed. The main castle in Ghent now houses a torture museum and lots of old armor. Be glad you weren’t alive during the middle ages. Eek! In 1949, university students in Ghent were upset about the price of beer increasing, so they stormed the castle, took the single guard hostage, and held a protest. They threw rotten fruit and eggs at passersby, who called the police (who were unable to help). So the local fire department had to come remove the students from the castle. Sadly, the price of beer didn’t get lowered. In between seeing all the towers and the castle, our tour stopped at 4 restaurants and had a course at each. Kind of like a progressive dinner. The first stop was a champagne bar, which had great appetizers and fantastic champagne. They have a hundred kinds of champagne and tend to get it from small champagne houses. Alas, only a sip for me of the champagne, but it was very very good. This of course caught the I attention of my table mates who inquired about my lack of interest in the champagne, which led to a lot of discussion about babies and children. We also ate a course in an old guild hall for boatsmen, great venison steak at a restaurant near the theater, and ended up at a coffee bar-bar-dessert restaurant.

This last stop, Onze, had the best hot chocolate I’ve ever had in my life. Really. Best. Hot cholcolate. Ever. It was a mug of warm, rich milk served with a little dish of rapidly melting chocolate chips. It also came with chocolate mousse and whipped cream. Yum. I think the coffee drinkers were even jealous of how good my hot chocolate looked. We were joined at the last stop by a famous citizen of Ghent, a gentleman in his 70’s who plays American music starting from the late 1800’s until the present. He gave a musical tour of American music, with early church music, ragtime, gospel, jazz, blues, rhythm and blues (the original kind, not the current R&B), and also played some stuff by Paul Simon and Randy Newman. He knows a lot more about US music history than I do. He is a frequent visitor to New Orleans and has played at Preservation Hall.

Overall, a very interesting evening. The Belgians really know how to entertain!

Oh…. The conference… right. That’s the reason I was in Ghent. It was nice and in English, which is very helpful. We spent about 3 hours there. My host gave his talk and then we went sightseeing and chocolate shopping. The chocolate here really is better than anywhere else. So yummy. I hope TinyD will be a chocolate fan and not one of these strange kids who doesn’t like it.

OK, so we’ve got the pool for guessing when and size, but the question we keep getting asked is what’s the name. As you know, we’re not going to tell you, but we’d love to hear your guesses. So, post your guesses in the comments of this post (remember you have to be a registered user to post a comment). Include first and middle name, and feel free to include multiple guesses. We’ll see who if anyone gets it. Guess away.

Just for fun, we’ve set up a baby pool! To participate, go to:

http://www.expectnet.com/games/BabySellers

or go to ExpectNet.com and enter BabySellers as the game name in the space indicated on the home page.

Let the guessing begin!

I really don’t drink Diet Coke anymore. I think I’ve had a total of 3 cans since becoming pregnant. My taste buds have changed so now I can taste artificial sweeterner down to the ppm. I have the occasional regular coke. Mmmm. sugar. And mainly have decaf or regular hot tea in the am. Maybe that’s why I was so tired the 1st trimester - the whole thing was caffeine withdrawal.

I also have an even stronger sense of smell than before - Travis refers to it as Supernose ™. There are benefits and downfalls to Supernose. Benefit - my family left the gas turned on on the stove over Christmas. Twice. I’m the one who smelled it prior to calamity. Downfall - I can smell unpleasant things with new vigor. For example, there’s a set of double doors at Johns Hopkins that smell. Bad. I never knew that doors have a smell, but these do. They’re just normal hall doors not far from patient rooms. Hmmmm…. I can also smell people more than before. I have always been able to smell them some (I’m female, have a good sense of smell, and am around lots of patients with unique smells), but now I get alot more input than before. Hopefully this will resolve a bit before I’m changing 16 diapers a day.

I ventured out to dinner alone this evening, to a Greek restaurant across the street from my apartment. I don’t think anyone there spoke English, and I don’t speak German or Greek, but they seemed to recognize I needed and English menu. They had great food and I ate a bunch of gyro meat (which seemed to be real meat on a skewer, not the sliced stuff on sandwiches in B’more), some lamb which was tasty, french fries (of course), and something related to Spanish rice (red, had peas in it, didn’t eat it). The meal came with salad and I was expected Greek salad, or something similar. However, restaurants in Germany seem to have a great love for Thousand Island dressing. Hello, 1970’s USA. I had Thousand Island on the airplane, it’s the only salad dressing in the hospital cafeteria, and they served it at the Greek restaurant. At the end of the meal, the waiter brought a shot glass of something clear and glittering to the table for me. I have bad memories from college of clear drinks that appear to have glitter floating in them; so I took a miniscule sip, confirmed that it was indeed alcohol and tasted like licorice, and put it aside. Does anyone know what it was? Is it ouzo?

Boy am I developing a taste for sparkling water. This had started a little before I came to Germany, as I have eliminated wine, beer, and diet coke from my diet. But here, instead of a big watercooler of Deer Park at the hospital, or jugs of water, the small bottles of aquafina and deer park that are everywhere in the US, or just drinking out of the sink, they have bottles of sparkling water. Sparkling water is served in restaurants unless you request flat water. I even have a few bottles in the apartment.

There is no trash anywhere. No litter, no discarded aluminum cans or cigarette butts (and smoking is common here, so this is a surprise). There’s so little trash that I’m not sure what to do with the trash in the can in my apartment. It seems that there should be a dumpster or outside cans somewhere, but so far, no luck. Maybe I can sneak it into work and throw it away there?

Recycling is very popular here and seems that everyone does it. Tomorrow must be recycling day, because every home I walk by has clear bags out front (that say something in German) and seem to be filled with recyclables.

They also don’t use aluminum cans here anymore. Everyone buys their drinks in 1 L bottles and then returns them to the store for money. It’s significant money that gets refunded, which must encourage recycling. Yesterday, I was at a grocery store with one of my hosts (kind of like a superwalmart, more on this later) and 24 or so empty liter bottles netted about 10 euro.

Unlike US hospitals, there are no Styrofoam/plastic/paper cups used here. They drink water and coffee out of, get this, water glasses (yes, glass) and coffee cups. They magically get washed in the dishwasher in the endo unit and get reused. As a result, they seem to generate a lot less trash.

I’ve always had an innie belly button, but now I can see a lot more of it. Not truly an outie yet, so I refer to it as a flattie, but I think I’ll have an outie eventually. I definitely need to get hold of some maternity clothes. Maybe I can shop when I get home. For now, I have a suit, 1 pair of maternity pants, 1 pair of low-slung pants, and some other pants that still fit with some modifications. One of my favorite (and stylish) medicine attendings at work wore all her normal pants during pregnancy, just unbuttoned and partly unzipped with a belt to hold them in place and a long shirt. I tried it today and it was surprisingly effective and comfortable.