Zero To One Thousand Sixty

So like I was saying in my last post, it's reeeealy truly hit me that this is it. We have like 17 more days until our due date. SEVENTEEN DAYS!!! What the mother fuck??? 

I'm currently operating on three speeds: 

1. Drop dead exhausted

2. Wired like a meth head

3. Cranky bitch who wants to, but can't seem to get enough done. And no you can't help cause you won't do it right. (I believe the books poetically refer to this as "nesting", but I also currently believe the authors are morons.)

I'm going to blame that last speed on my current state of consistent sleep deprivation. Cause oh my hell does trying to sleep suck my ass. Being in bed is barely tolerable and then I have to get up to pee. And turning over in bed is harder than trying to like the Twilight movies. (I want so badly to love them as much as I did the books, but sweet Jesus does Kristen Stewart suck {ha ha} what little talent is in the cast to begin with out of those movies. Taylor Lautner is almost as bad but at least he serves as a little piece of eye candy.) What was I talking about? Sleep. Right. It sucketh mightily. But I fully understand that this is my body's way of preparing me to be up every two hours feeding and taking care of my sweet baby. In that case? I'M READY, YO.

Belly Wise all sorts of things are a happenin' in/on there. More stretch marks, yay. And cheese and crackers has Round Ligament pain come back with a vengeance. I guess that's because my uterus is the size of Nebraska, and it's getting harder for those little ligaments to haul all that weight around. 

 I'm fairly certain the kiddo is getting pretty cramped in there too. The last few days it feels like he/she has been doing squat-thrusts and lunges in an attempt to make more room in there. Which sounds adorable, and believe me I'm pretty sure I'll miss it some day, but right now it's getting to the point where it just plain hurts.

More than once I've mistaken my fingers for Vienna Sausages. My poor hands are getting so swollen that I have resorted to wearing this ghetto fabulous little number that I got from a Bachelorette party like a million years ago: 

I know it seems nuts, but the stones in the ring are so absurdly large that it makes my fingers seem not-so-corndog-like. Seriously by the afternoon, the lines around my knuckles are disturbingly smooth.

The girls. TMI warning - they haven't gotten any larger but something in them is a brewin'. I've been noticing little droplets of liquid from them since around 28 weeks, but it's getting more consistent now. And if I massage my breasts a little I can actually sort of make stuff come out. It looks like both colostrum and milk. Kinda crazy, kinda cool. 

In the five days we have made an obscene amount of progress in getting ready for baby. 

The furniture is finally in

Curtains are up

The baby's laundry is completely done, folded and put away 

Car seat is installed - though we still need to run it by a fire station to have it okay'd (for peace of mind)

Here is Brian being all ridiculously cute and daddy-like installing said car seat:

Bassinet is put together

Hospital Bag is 70% ready to go

- I know I should have had that done weeks ago, but read my last post if you're still not following. Ten percent of the missing items I need to shop for and the other twenty percent are last minute things we can't pack until it's actually time to go. 

And helping to make it all Super DUPER real: Friday is my last day of work!

So it's umm, well after midnight here and I am WIDE awake-asaurus- rex. 

Think I'll go mow the lawn or something! 

PEACE. 

Oh! I added two new pics to the Photo Gallery. One is a belly pic and the other is  a last minute u/s they ordered for a growth check on account of my MTHFR. Baby is measuring in the 43rd percentile. 

Enjoy!

Now Lower In Sodium!

My diet so far during this pregnancy has been fairly decent, in my opinion anyway. While I’m not keeping super close tabs I think up about 13-15 lbs so far. I gained 12 of that in the first 6 weeks because the only things that didn’t want to make me yak, were dairy and carbs. But since the second trimester I’ve been able to eat better and I’ve pretty much maintained my weight in the last 10 weeks. Maybe going up or down a pound here and there, but mostly  staying the same. So I’m golden, right? Yeah, not so much.

At my last appointment with the OB formerly known as my doctor, he made a comment about my blood pressure being on the high side. Like, consistently on the high side. In the past I’ve been known to refer to myself as “one of those patients” .. Meaning, my anxiety is always a little heightened at the beginning of an appointment, thus my BP elevates. So I asked that they check it again at the end of the appointment. ( FYI, I’m also one of those patients who doesn’t have a gag reflex until someone has to stick a wooden tongue depressor in my mouth… Go figure.) Anyhoo, he said if it was high one at one more appointment they were going to put me on a Blood Pressure medication. Crapola. And much to my dismay, this time it did not go down much at the end of that appointment.

So that was at my appointment last Monday. Tuesday was my car accident, so Wednesday I had to go back in for another checkup. That time I saw my favorite Nurse Practitioner and she noticed that yet again my BP was elevated. She seemed more concerned than the Dr. did, and asked me to pick up a BP Cuff at a drug store so that I could monitor my rates for the next few days, and possibly two weeks.  She told me to call in two days with my BP from that evening, then an AM and PM log for Thursday. When I called her back with the results she was still pretty unhappy, and told me I needed to start a low sodium regimen asap, and that she’d give me two weeks and if my levels didn’t drop they were going to put me on BP meds, STAT.

I have to say, I was pretty bummed. Especially when I read how dangerous elevated Blood Pressure levels can be during pregnancy. With  pre-term labor, and cardiac arrest being two of the worst case scenarios. I was terrified at the idea that my body was putting the baby in danger, and just plain hated the fact that I couldn’t have an uneventful pregnancy, just when I started to feel a little more at ease… And damn it, I didn’t want to take any more medications.

So began my low sodium diet, and my new obsession with checking my BP. My worst recorded rate at home was 138 over 87. Not. Good. And for the first three days it stayed within that range: Mid to high 130’s over mid to high 80’s. Double crapola. But over the weekend I started getting better numbers and by this morning I was 113 over 72. It hasn’t taken an exorbitant amount of effort to eliminate extra salt, but it is like any other diet – I just have to pay more attention to things like the fact that I like black olives. A lot. Like to the point where I would pretty much open a can to snack on while cooking dinner, and maybe I’d drink some of the juice right from the can… (Heathen! they shout) WHAT? It’s a healthy fat! Come on, they’re just olives. It’s not like I was snacking on Crisco, for crying out loud.

Anyway. I’m really grateful to have seen a difference so quickly, and I know it could have been a lot worse. I think it was that much harder emotionally because I had finally gotten to the point where I received fairly consistent reassurance that the baby is alive from feeling it’s kicks, to then finding out that there is potentially something that could take the baby away, and possibly me with it. Worst case scenario, I know. But still, very scary. And speaking of scary, my three hour blood glucose test is next week. I would like to think it’s going to be fine, but the truth is I have no idea what my body is or isn’t doing any more. So I’m just going to roll with it… 


(New pics to come in the photo gallery shortly!)

The Sum of All Parts

Alright, I’m starting to feel a little bratty about my last post. Especially because not more than two posts ago I was bitching and begging for boring...  


I want to thank those of who validated my difficulty in transitioning, it’s really nice to hear that I’m not alone there and please know really and truly am grateful to have had an extraordinarily boring appointment. I look forward to many more of them. Really. I think the reasons for my reaction yesterday are twofold. One – I really was used to the super intense, and very goal oriented appointments that were part of seeing an RE. Two – I like the fundamentals of how this Doctor runs his practice, but I just don’t mesh with his personality. Or maybe I’m being too uptight. Expecting too much. Maybe being with someone who is so low-key is the best thing for me. Knock me out of my tightly closed shell. Or maybe I’ll start shopping for a new OB. Stay Tuned. 


So yeah, this last appointment was fairly uneventful. At the end of the appointment the nurse gave me a flyer with the name of a specialist that they wanted me to see for my 20 week scan. Twenty-flippin’-weeks. I am almost halfway through this pregnancy and still in denial. Sometimes when I say it to myself, it feels as new and as foreign as the day I saw a positive test. It’s just bananas. Anyhoo, lots of people have been asking about this scan and when we’ll find out what we’re having, and for a surprisingly large amount of people their heads are blown clean off when we tell them: December. We’ll find out in December, when I give birth. 


I’ve never really given much thought to gender prediction when it came to pregnant women. If you think about it, it’s as arbitrary as trying to guess hair or eye color. There’s only a limited number of things it could be, so why speculate based on how someone is carrying, what they’re cravings are, or whether or not their asses got fat. My best friend has three boys and each of her pregnancies were entirely unique. I know, I’m no fun right? True story, my friends. I’m kind of a curmudgeon when it comes to stuff like that. I guess I can see the harmless fun it throwing out guesses, and I’ll admit I’ve participated in more than one baby pool. But hell, I play the in the office Superbowl pools, even though I despise football. I just have a soft spot for illegal sources of gambling. 

When people hear that we’re not going to find out what sex of the baby is, some think it’s great, but some act like we’ve deliberately chosen to disappoint them. Like it’s a plot against them or something. That usually segues into their next question of whether or not we have a preference. I usually respond with a smile and laugh about not really caring. Brian is diplomatic as always and says he sees the joy in both genders. But when prodded I usually end up cutting them off with a sentence like “ It took us four years to get pregnant, we just want A. BABY. So do I hope it’s a boy? Do I hope it’s a girl? No. I hope IT gets here safe and healthy and that Brian and I have a significant role in making sure it turns out to be a caring, sensitive, productive member of society. So go ahead and buy IT something yellow already and leave me the hell alone.” 

Okay, I don’t really say any of that.  But I think it while I smile and nod, and try not to head-butt them. The truth is I've never wanted to find out what we were having. Even back in the day when I thought sex made babies, and it would be easy for us; I always figured we'd find out when they were born. I'm more intrigued by the element of surprise than having the knowledge to plan bedding choices based on gender. That said if we ended up with twins, I probably would have caved and found out. Just seems like good common sense, no? 

So I’m looking forward to the big 20 week scan, but only because I’ll always want to have a peak at the baby before it gets here, it's seriously ridonkulous when I repeat that to myself. Twenty week scan... Also, since I have three more weeks before said ultrasound, I put up a belly pic in the Photo Gallery Tab. (Cringe) It's not a great one, but I took like 30 and posted the least awful one. Please don't laugh.