I read a post the other day on instagram about how woefully inaccurate due date calculation is. the inability to truly predict the due date is not news to me, but I had no idea the extent to which it is so often wrong. the post stated that the average spontaneous labor occurs at 41w3d, which is insane to me (ivo was born from an emergency c section at 41w1d). I also read an article about this topic which started that (according to a study of 20,000 births) gestational lengths for normal pregnancies can vary by up to 5 weeks. this information really just confirms a suspicion I already had. ever since ivo was born, I'd been wondering "what would actually have happened if I had just waited a bit longer?" considering that non stress testing showed 0 issue with my pregnancy and that I was induced 4 days before and he was born 1 day before the average spontaneous labor, I feel somewhat mislead and I may even go so far as to say I feel betrayed. was he even late? will having had a c section prevent me from having as many babies as I may want? if I'd have waited, would I have had a normal vaginal birth? part of me is truly heartbroken bc I don't and may never have answers to these questions. honestly, women are so mistreated and mislead during the whole pregnancy process, it's really such a shame. I've read and heard stories of women who've been treated much worse than I have, but I still can't help but wonder about these things.
my cooking journey is coming along slowly but surely, I'd say. my patents didn't really teach me how to cook. my dad is a terrible cook, no offense to him, and my mom is a good cook, but she doesn't like eating, thus she doesn't like cooking. I went to the grocery store earlier and got a bunch of WIC approved foods (which is a bunch of narrow and very specific food, aside from produce, which they so generously allow you to pick out for yourself). I bought some radishes and some pearl onions, among other things. they are not the most exotic vegetables by far, but I've never cooked with them and I'm feeling experimental these days. I've been using jacob's NYT subscription to use their food app. previously, I had been using pinterest for recipes but any old bozo can post on there and a lot of them suck I kinda like how the NYT cooking app is curated. so that half of the shopping is done, but now I have to buy all the food that's EBT eligible I have to do that portion of the task online, because I lost our bridge card and the info is still saved on my Amazon account. I do 2 hour delivery from whole foods, via Amazon. it works pretty good but I have some complaints that I won't get into (boring). maybe I'll go really crazy and buy a turnip LOL
My thoughts on Babylon are this: I had seen it advertised on Youtube and I went into it with some heavy bias. I thought it looked gay and stupid and that it was just going to be a bunch of hollywood jerk offs jerking each other off about how cool hollywood is. I almost didn't watch it but Jacob put on Whiplash first, which won my favor for the director, so I gave Babylon a chance. I do like his style, its very fast paced and musical. It gave me Moulin Rouge vibes, for sure. It was super engaging and generally well done but what really struck me was the end. There was a montage of movies throughout the years, which doesn't sound that crazy or cool, but there was a callback to a line from the beginning of the movie where theyre talking about their dreams of making movies and the guy says "to be part of something bigger than yourself" and then theres all this music and cool imagery and clips from movies and something about it just felt very sincere and loving, in a way. It made me realize that I've become very cynical when it comes to movies. I haven't been interpreting them in good faith and I'm always suspicious of the filmmaker. I feel some may have negative things to say about that montage but to me it felt like the director was expressing a very heartfelt appreciation for being given the chance to contribute to the canon of cinema, essentially. I found it very endearing and it reminded me of how much I love movies and how much they have impacted my life and me as a person. I was skeptical going in, but afterward I felt optimistic.