Last week, I finally finished up the tome I was slogging though for a book group, Personal History by Katharine Graham. I knew little about Graham except that she was in charge of the Washington Post during the Pentagon Papers and Watergate. I was more familiar with the former story because of my final graduate class, Journalism History.

I was concerned early on that this would be another "poor little rich girl" kind of story. After all, Graham's rise in her career can be attributed largely to her birth into a prominent family. Strangely, she is remarkably uncocky about what is handed to her. In fact, she downplays her education and work experiences from her single days. It seems strange that such a privileged background, growing up in two mansions run by hordes of servants, would produce such an unconfident person.

Graham attributes much of her lack of confidence to the ways in which her mother tore down her children, when she wasn't ignoring them completely. Only over the course of many years does Graham realize that her self-centered mother is not the only cause of her timidity. The entire culture fed her constant messages that she was nothing and that her talents would never stack up to a man's.

Graham never puts herself forward as any sort of poster child for the women's movement. She in fact faults herself for not being more sensitive to women in her workplace and of doing too little to improve working conditions for women. As a leader, she often deferred to the judgement of male colleagues, often against her better instincts. The way in which she fumbled around professionally actually made me see the women's movement in the 1960s and 70s in a new light. Many women were not bra-burning radicals, but simply intelligent people struggling to make a living and do their jobs competently. I don't think I appreciate enough what the last generation did to overcome barriers and remake our culture so that women could have opportunites to excel intellectually and professionally.

The other thing Graham's book helped me appreciate is how far mental health care has come since the early 1960s. Graham's husband left her a widow when he committed suicide in 1963. He showed all the signs of bipolar disorder, which experts then were just beginning to understand. Lithium treatment was experimental those days--bipolar patients usually received only counseling. I'm close to several bipolar people, including a relative, and I'm awed at what a difference medication makes. Tragic stories like Phil Graham's would be the norm if not for scientific breakthroughs in neurology.

Thanks to Dawn and her talk of wine tastings, I am suddenly craving something alcoholic. I could really, really go for a Woodchuck dark and dry hard cider right now. :-(

It's been a while since I've had a chance to blog. My organization's annual convention was two weeks ago, which meant several long days producing a daily newspaper for the show, then returning to the office to whip together the May issue of our regular magazine. The May issue went to press this morning, and I can now breathe again.

And now for the real news...drumroll please....

After our last disappointing ultrasound, we got our wish of learning the gender. We will be having a GIRL!

I realize that ultrasounds are not 100% accurate for determining gender, but none of us--the tech, her trainee, Joel nor I--saw evidence of boy parts.

Come August, we will welcome to the world Claire or Johanna or Amelia. We will pick the final name at the hospital.

Since you all gave us such great prayer support while we were trying to conceive, I thought I'd mention our current challenge.

With Joel working full time in the fall, it means he will not be able to be the primary caregiver for the baby, as we had planned earlier. We are working out some preliminary plans for childcare in the fall and appreciate your prayers. Joel's schedule will be heavy on M, W, F and light on Tu, Th. I would like to telecommute on his light days so that I can be with the baby some during the week, but still be able to put in hours my employer expects of a full-time employee. It's possible that Joel's mom will help at least one day a week. We would like to find a Christian stay-at-home mom near us who might be willing to watch the baby a few days a week at a reasonable rate. It's a lot of details to work out by October, when my maternity leave will end.

We got some very good news regarding Joel's job situation starting this fall. But it's his news to tell, so let the spamming begin: Bug him at garver@lasalle.edu and perhaps he'll take a moment to blog about it.

I had my "big" ultrasound done on Tuesday, and it look's like we're going to have....a baby!

Nope, we weren't able to discover the gender of our incubating little one. S/he was face-down/spine up the whole time, with legs crossed at the knees. In fact, the tech couldn't even get a very good scan of the entire heart, just a side view, so I'm scheduled to go back for yet another ultrasound in three weeks. We're praying the insurance company doesn't have a cow!

So, the waiting continues. I'm gradually coming to accept the fact the we might not be able to learn the baby's gender ahead of time. I've never been too great with surprises, but that's a large part of parenthood, so I suppose I need to learn to deal with it now.