Second Doula Interview Great!

We met with another doula, this one also an Oak Parker, who specializes in hypnotherapy. I'm not doing the hypnotherapy aspect, but this also means she is very skilled in talking you thru a contraction with a soothing voice and she--her name is Tanya--did an example for me and she's wonderful! She can work with the yoga and knows the positions. But also, get this, she's also a labor & delivery nurse, an R.N., and has been doing this for over 20 years. Technically that makes her not just a doula but what's called a monitrice, and she seems to know just everything there is to know about birthing. She also does massage, and is very supportive of Ben's role as coach. She also has an intricate knowledge of what the nurses need to get done and how to stall them from wisking the baby away while she helps me get that first latch. She's more expensive than the last doula we interviewed, but she feels like "the one." This is weird, I know, but after she left I told Ben, "she smells good." I can't explain it, but I'm going with my gut feelings. Natalie was great, I'm sorry, but after just one interview we are instinctively drawn toward Tanya. She also has a website, just Google Tanya Mchale. Tanya really impressed me as a more mature and experienced and assertive doula who will step into the fire for us and really advocate for what we want at the hospital. She also is very warm and has a great hug. More later after we have our prenatal visit in a few days.

Tyler Sneezing on Me...

Just when I thought I was all better, and my laryngitis is fading away, Tyler developes a new cold and has been sneezing on me all day! Oh, no!

Big News from the Latest Doctor Visit

Yesterday Ben and I traipsed into the city for the latest set of appointments. The NST (non-stress test, where they monitor baby's movements and heartbeat) went beautifully. Lots of movement and peaks over a solid baseline, with baby kicking at the monitor.

Next over to the doctor's office where we discovered some exciting news. Those contractions last weekend paid off, and the doc says that more important than my 2 centimeters dilation is a 75% effacement of the cervix! How cool is that! (Dilation is the cervix opening, which needs to reach 10 cm to get baby thru, while effacement refers to the cervix thinning, and can take a lot of work to acheive. You can Google "effacement" if you want to see more of a description. Effacement and dilation work together on the cervix, thinning and retracting until you get a lip of cervix they call the "ring of fire.") The baby has also dropped much further.

Dr. Arof kept saying how really pleased he was with the effacement, and seemed actually excited about it. Which was neat to see. He had a kind of happy buzz of energy about him. I really hope we get him for delivery, but we might get an associate on call because he's on vacation next week thru up to my due date, and he really thinks I could go anytime now. He said he wouldn't be surprised if the next time I see him I have a baby in my arms.

Can you imagine? A baby in my arms!

My cervix and uterus are sore, and my pelvis feels like a loose bag of rattling, sliding bones. I am all full of baby, and I am getting kicked in the ribs. She stretches and wriggles against her tight quarters. I always have to pee, and sleep raised up on pillows to prevent heartburn. I'm terribly, terribly fatigued, and constantly want to just sit down. I'm trying to enjoy Tyler and, as my Grandma would say, "give him sugar" as much as I can now while it's just us. These are precious few days.

A baby in my arms!

Gifts for Baby

This holiday I've been truly blessed by the creativity of my friends and family around me. As soon as I can download them, I will post photos of some of the gifts here that the new baby has received. A classic Pooh & friends quilt made by our Aunt Agnes, a beautiful crochet baby blanket from our Aunt Sharon, two knitted mice--one for baby and one for Tyler as companion--made by my work friend Julie who is a member of my lunch-time craft club, and then I made crochet mittens to go with the bunting I got, and Nana/my mom is making a matching hat.

This is the crochet blanket from my Aunt Sharon, also with the two knitted mice from my friend and craft club member Julie:


Here are photos of Aunt Agnes's baby quilt:





















Here are the baby mittens I made to go with the bunting:

Doula Interview Sunday

We all slept in after the eventful family Solstice, what with its crazy-driver hard play and hours of contractions for me, and we were barely ready for Natalie the doula when she showed up on time at 10 a.m. Why did I choose such an early time? Sheesh.

She seems really great, meets all my expectations, and from my earlier description of her you can throw in aromatherapy. She also brings a kit with birth ball and whatnot to the birth. She can definitely work with my yoga and yogic breathing (pranayama). She also is very inclusive of Ben and his role of coach and her interaction with him was great. She seems very laid back and open to our preferences.

The only thing was that Ben and I did not have a struck-by-lightning "this-is-the-one" feeling like we got when we met our new doctor. I don't know, it's probably not fair to expect that of her, or of everyone we encounter in this birth experience. But she's good and I would be happy with her.

Tyler really liked her, and after initially telling her "bye bye" instead of hello, he warmed up to her, kept interrupting, trying to bring her toys or entice her onto the floor with him, and even a week later he is still asking for her!

I have one other doula to talk to and after that will make a quick decision. (If "quick" is something that can ever be ascribed to anything I ever do!)

I guess the weird thing that strikes me about all this is how I'm striving to get together a team to assist in the birth experience, but really they are all strangers--or rather I should call them newbies or something less alienating--altho they are experts. Hospital, doctor, nurse, doula, dad/coach, maybe aunt. Most of them are new to me and there I have to get half nude and push out a baby with all the sweat, blood, tears, and other unnamable bodily fluids that come with it! At the time, tho, I know I will no longer care who sees what!

Natalie has been a doula for 6 years and attended 62 births. None of this stuff will be new to her! But still, we had to chuckle after she left. We were so embarrassed that while she was here, we offered her coffee and then Ben didn't know how to make it, and she asked for cream and we only had whole milk; then I tried to subtly hide a box of Summer's Eve wipes that Tyler had taken from the bathroom and played with and left on the table, and ended up dropping the box right in front of her; we forgot to turn up the heat and she had her scarf on the whole time; Ben sat in the glider I got recently and a spring loudly broke; and at the end when she used the bathroom it was out of toilet paper and Ben had to run upstairs for another roll! Ben said, she might as well know now what kind of people we are!

Oh, well.

Contractions for Solstice

Solstice was a nice family affair with gifts exchanged between just me, Ben, and Tyler. We gave Tyle a doll and stroller, and he buzzed around with the stroller calling out "crazy driver! crazy driver!" It doesn't have a name yet, just "Tyler's baby." I'm hoping the baby will help him when I bring a real new baby home soon! (Since then, Nana has taught him how to hold baby doll properly, which is sweet.) He also got a digger, specifically the big backhoe from Bob the Builder called Scoop, which was a huge hit. Ben managed to surprise me with a new Tori Amos album, I don't know how he got that past me, I'm a big fan. Guess saying I've been distracted is an understatement! Plus he burned a disk of demos, soundtrack tracks and unreleased stuff I also didn't have. I got him a couple DVDs from the new MST3K-originated The Film Crew, and we settled in for the incredibly hilarious Wild Women of Wongo. Which, by the way, was the most hilarious thing I've seen in a long, long time!

Contractions started as we put Tyler to bed, maybe 8:30, and went thru the movie to past midnight. They were more painful that the last ones, kept me awake, and lasted 30 to 45 seconds, with a few up to a minute long, and came regularly but erratically, a few minutes apart at most. But they eventually died away on their own, and I got a good night's rest. I hope very much that I got another couple centimeters out of this work--this is hard work!

Doula Interview this Weekend!

I've been searching on-line and among friends' recommendations for a doula, and I found one I really like. Her website explains how she comes to the profession, and the important role her own first doula played in supporting her husband as coach, which is important to Ben. She is not one of those that advocates only for a natural drug-free birth, altho she knows how to do that, too, but she is supportive of my decision to get an epidural. I talked to her last night. She is a childbirth educator too, and a yoga instructor, and will help me to incorporate my yoga breathing and positioning into my labor. Which I think is really cool. Many doulas have websites or are at least on several certified doula network websites, and many of them do hypnotherapy, which seems popular now but I really am not interested in. I would have been happy with massage therapy, but yoga I didn't expect and consider it a big bonus. She has two children, 7 and 4, and has been a doula for 6 years. She lives in Roger's Park in Chicago and can work with my Oak Park/Prentice Hospital locations.

In essence, I get two prenatal visits (tho I'm running out of time for that) and two postnatal visits, one when the baby is a few days old and another a week or two later. I can call her while in labor and she will come to the house and help time contractions and help with pain management and yoga and all that good stuff, and will go along with us to the hospital and stay throughout the entire labor. She will stay for several hours after the birth, too, and assist in getting a good latch-on for breastfeeding. (Prentice also has two lactation consultants on staff who visit within 24 hours of the birth, so I feel pretty well covered. I will still find a number or consultant practice locally to call if having trouble at home. I get lists from Prentice and LaLeche and I have my old list from West Sub, too.)

She's expensive at $800, but that's standard as far as my research tells me. I will get my holiday bonus today at work, and will apply it entirely toward this, and will cut the cost in half. Insurance doesn't cover this. I think it's worth it, tho. Ben says, "If you want a doula, you get a doula, no matter the cost...I don't even get a veto, or even an opinion...maybe just a consultation, if that!" I told him of course I want to find someone who can work with us both! But I do appreciate his cooperation in this. I was so afraid we'd be alone w/ no advocate, with decisions made by strangers/doctors on call and nurses coming and going in shifts, like what happened last time. In any case, my parents will stop in, and my friend Michelle will come by at some point and is willing to help (she's excellent at massage), and if my Aunt Sharon is in town (she may be) she may attend. Prentice lets a lot of people in to the L&D rooms. But I expect what will actually happen is that it will be me, Ben, and Natalie (the doula). I do want some privacy and consistency. (After the baby comes I am looking forward to having guests, especially my mother-in-law Madalen and my Aunt Sharon! Two very special mothering women in my life.)

Natalie's coming on Sunday for an interview with us to make sure we're a good fit. Meeting her is important, our gut reactions to her will be important. Keeping my fingers crossed that she and Ben get along, too. My phone conversation with her already left me feeling very good about her. If this works out I will consider myself lucky, especially considering I'm setting this up so late. But she says it's never too late. She once had someone hire her while already in labor!

Here's her website address: http://www.mamabellybirth.com/

If you Google (Natalie Evans, doula, Chicago), you see her all over the place!

Craving Snow

Hold me back! Every day I very strongly want to dive into the nearest snowbank and whip out a spoon. I'm crunching ice at work (we have a lovely ice maker at work that makes these little square pieces!). This is an iron deficiency, so I'm eating spinach and soups with chicken stock and iron supplements.

P.S. Snow just doesn't taste like I remember when I was little! What's with that?

Bad Driver

Well, it's official. I am now a bad driver. I've always considered myself a good driver, but lately, well. I blame it on the pregnancy. I can unsafely say that I have had a close call once every day this week, twice this morning. Thing is, I don't ever see them coming! They just magically appear, there in front of me in a parking lot or suddenly going at high speeds down a local street that I thought was empty. I'm getting really paranoid and driving slowly and annoying people. I really, really don't want an accident right now. You know what? In an ideal world I would just stay home from here on out. But I can't afford it, I'm expected at work, today's society is just not in tune with those sorts of needs. But it won't be long, now! Solstice is this weekend, Christmas is next week, New Year's after that, and that's lots of holidays at home, then I'm thinking of stopping coming to work even if I don't have the baby right on the 7th.

P.S. Feeling Better

My cold has drastically improved, thank goodness! But my voice is going. I've got that husky Stevie Nicks thing going on, which is kind of fun. We are all getting better now.

The Devil In Me

Woke up with the devil in me, weirdly cheerful. Sat up and started talking to Ben, who was pushing "snooze" and trying to ignore me, which only drove me on! Told him stupid jokes, too. It was great. Mwah-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Crawling Around

Well, last night was...interesting. I was feeling pretty fatigued to begin with, when these erratic contractions in my lower back/upper pelvis took ahold. I was upstairs getting Tyler ready for bed. I got so far as getting a good cloth diaper on him (which is always a struggle as he kicks and giggles or won't cooperate) when he managed to scootch it down so he could "pee pee on the potty." Then he took it off entirely, and I sat on the floor of his room hoping the pains would pass. He ran around naked, playing, rumaging through his books, and climbing me as I sat with my forehead on the glider's ottoman. I couldn't get up, I couldn't lift him, I couldn't hold him still to get a new diaper on him, much less his jammies, and I couldn't talk him into cooperating with anything. After about 30 or 40 minutes of freebie late-night naked-time that extended way past his bed-time, I decided to crawl down the hall to the phone and see if a friend or even Ben from work could come and just please slap a disposable on him and lift him into his crib for me. (He's been going back and forth between his toddler bed and his crib, and my bed too, so I didn't much care where he slept, actually.) I didn't get far when Tyler announced he was ready for his diaper ("diaper on!") and so I put on a disposable right there on the floor, and he helped me get his jammies on. He didn't get to bed until after 9p.m. The pains got better around then, too. I've decided to keep my cell phone on me at all times from here on out.

I had wanted to go to LaLeche Tuesday night, too, but couldn't find anyone to watch him. While they allow you to bring your baby, loud and active 2-year-olds I'm not thinking would work well at the meetings. As it is I always get help getting him in and out of the car anymore, and even going down the street, well, not so much! As it turns out being home was best. But that was my last LaLeche opportunity before the new year. Kind of a bummer. I'm going to have to call the organizers to get local lactation consultants names.

It's highly frustrating, trying to explain to friends that don't have kids how impossible it is to do anything. They have no idea. Maybe I have too much of a sense of entitlement when I ask for help, perhaps I have the wrong attitude, it's certainly not very Buddhist of me to get so angry. Of course my friends have no idea how upset I get, because I don't haul off and yell or cry because I know I'm being a little crazy, you know? I've missed all the LaLeche meetings, I went to only 2 out of 6 prenatal yoga classes this last session, I haven't been able to make any of the latest book groups at the library, and missed all of the films being shown by OPCTJ, I haven't been to any DFA meetings since summer, my participation in the parents' group my friend and I started has dribbled down to nothing, I've only been out shopping with a friend once (with Tyler in stroller), and, well, this really gets to you after awhile. I'm afraid cabin fever will set in once I have the baby, so I'll be counting on getting visitors! The guest room is clean, except for the pile of toddler shoes in the corner, which I invite you to help sort and store! :-)

Dreamt it's a Boy!

Last night I dreamt I was in Walgreens with several coworkers and my boss, Steve, when I went into labor. I thought, gee, this is serious I'd better get home. But then I had the urge to push. Just as an experiment I pushed a little, and out popped the baby! Margaret wrapped it up in a blanket and announced "it's a boy!" I said "no, it's not." We went back and forth until I demanded to hold the baby myself and peek at its body. I was disappointed it wasn't a girl until Tyler came in and grabbd my face and did this thing he likes to do, where he puts his hands on either side fo your face and leans in until your foreheads are touching, and grinning the whole time. So I told him, "guess what--you got a little brother!" And he was thrilled. Then I named the baby one of our back-up names, and spent the rest of remaining dream moments trying to remember what the boy name was that we've picked.

Doctor Visit This Morning

Still at 1 and a half centimeters, everything my body is doing is completely normal. Baby is quieter now that it's bigger, and deeper now that it's dropped, and they couldn't find the heartbeat on the monitor for the NST (non-stress test) and so they sent me over to the hospital for a hi tech NST (just walked down the street), the results of which were just fine and also reassuring. (It's scary to have them say "we can't find the heartbeat!") So from here on out I have to go over and get the NST at the old Prentice (ambulatory center) and then have a second appt with the doc. It's exhausting, but okay. The R.N. over at the clinic was just wonderful and we chatted the whole time. As a matter of fact, all the staff back at the doctor's office already know my name and greet me cheerfully and Ben remarked on it.

Yes, Ben came with me this time, and we had a written list of questions for the doc, and the doc was as usual great. We went over our birth plan w/ him, too. Last pregnancy the birth plan was an exhaustive two page document, now it's like 7 quick bullet points. The first bullet point made Dr. Arof laugh:

* Epidural: Yes, please!

Also, Dr. Arof is very, very supportive of our getting a doula.

We saw the woman who recommended the doctor to us there (one of two, actually)--I've been running into her at almost every appointment. She's a library patron and it was great to see her with Ben along since he's the "library guy." She was in for a fancy NST just like me, and told us she has a planned c-section tomorrow (it's her third child and third "C" so she doesn't have much choice). I'm a little envious she's getting her baby tomorrow!

Don't Worry

I know my last post was pretty awful, but it really helped to vent. I went home and thought gee, that's just the sort of thing I usually don't tell anybody, and now I've told everybody! Blogging is a dangerous occupation! :-)

So I will try not to innundate you with negativity, and rest assured that I will keep plugging away at the house stuff.

Love to all...

Warning: Feeling Down Today

I woke up angry and depressed after a dream which seems to be about my frustration lately. I was at a store, which strangely was converting to a library, trying to buy two DVDs for Ben for Christmas. Standing for a long time is a challenge for me and in the dream I was just as pregnant and just as much couldn't stand as I am in real life. The line kept seeming to grow and I suspected people were cutting in front of me whenever I spaced out. I switched lines only to find the line I left improved after I'd gone and my problem switched to the line I'd joined. I switched back, and suddenly couldn't approach the counter b/c they had put a wooden extension on it, so I had to slide thd DVDs over to them. They took my $50 bill, my birthday money by the way, and proceded to take the DVDs out of the plastic security cases and handed me the cases and walked away from the register. I tried to get them to come back, as they took all my money and didn't give me anything--DVDs or change! They all acted like I was crazy. In the meantime, Ben stood outside the plate glass window of the store asking "what's the holdup? let's get a move on here!"

I woke up really angry which switched swiftly over to feeling depressed, and I haven't shaken it all day. (I also woke with prelabor back pain.) Recently Ben and I have had some disagreements which I won't go into here, but let's just say our fears about the labor and desires about how it should go and who should attend are, um, different, and clashing. I am greatly afraid that after working so hard to get a new doctor and hospital, that Ben and I will end up with an on-call doctor and alone with no advocate at all, with birthing decisions being made for us by strange staff who won't be as friendly as promised, and no friends coming to see us since we chose a hospital way in the city, and because it's so close to the holidays and everyone's going out of town.

I've been researching doulas all along and have another one now that I like, but we'll see what happens. Also I have one friend who volunteered to come. I have another friend who is being very supportive and encouraging about getting a doula, and it really helps to talk to her. I'm going to act fast and make some decisions this week!!!

I'm also depressed because I feel so alone when it comes to making our home ready for baby. I have books scattered around the front living rooms and boxes to put them in so someone can tote them to the basement, sitting there for weeks. The Solstice Tree is still in it's box there, not up, no ornaments are out yet. The carpets all over the house are filthy and need a good vaccuming...or two. The kitchen is in such a state that there's no counter space to cook food, and I'm scrounging to feed me and Tyler alone evenings like we're camping out in our own home. And me with all my dietary restrictions and pathetic dizzy spells, I feel so stupid and weak. The bassinet and rocking chair are clean and ready in our bedroom, but ditto the carpet there, and the stacks of my clothes that need putting away are scary, and I have an undone project which involves moving dressers to switch with Ben and putting up shelves in the bathroom alcove and putting bathroom/pharmacy supplies and folded towels up there and clearing the walkway to the bathroom and picking up supplies that have migrated to the floor. And I'm losing my battle with the grout in the bathroom. I can't do this alone, I can't. I've never felt so out of control, so incapable, so much that my time is not my own (mostly Tyler's) and that all my wishes for my home are never ever going to happen. My dad is so busy between work travel and his mom/my grandmother who keeps falling and being taken back to the hospital, and Ben has a hernia combined with a reluctance to accept outside help, and between us two I'm the handy one, besides we've all been knocked over by this cold for the past month. Even if we hired someone to come clean it still could only affect a certain amount because they can't vaccum a pile of books that need sorting or know what goes to AmVets or into the trash or stored away. I need to hire a team like in the book A Patchwork Planet--do they even exist? It has snowed now, so I have to wait for Spring for the new window, and the new roof and gutters, which whenever the snow melts leaks again! And the storm windows that I want made. And new carpet in the front room. We need a plumber and an electrician, but I'm so embarrassed about my home I don't call. We are thinking we will cancel Christmas at our place this year, and our Solstice dinner too, just to not have to clean. I'm such a failure. How on earth will we take in guests when the baby comes? How can I bear it? We live like wolves. I'm so ashamed.

Nothing Yet

Sorry, false alarm. Even tho I knew it was probably nothing, I just thought I might have the baby last night! And of course the doc said it was normal when I called and I felt a little foolish. I guess, even tho I know what the real, big, painful labor feels like from the first birth, I was induced, and have never had a natural progression of labor. I'm really enjoying others' labor stories right now, tho. So keep 'em comin'!

Significant Sign of Pre or Early Labor

Just discovered what they call "bloody show"--getting excited! Asked my mom to stay w/ me this evening. Also am supposed to call the doctor. However, this could still go all month! Yikes!

Just a quick note. Hopefully more from me tomorrow. I need one more day at work to finish my work and some personal things. Just now ordered Solstice cards. So expect them late! :-)

So It Begins...!

Big news from my doctor's appt this morning: I'm dilated 1 and a half centimeters! I told the doc this morning about the early labor, and he says that could go on for a month. I could stay at this dilation for weeks, and deliver on time, or I could go any time. He is comfortable with the baby's development now and if it comes it would not be "premature." He says at full term it will be about 8 pounds, and at the last ultrasound it was 6 and a half pounds, and in the 75th percentile for size. I didn't get the height, I will call them.

The baby has dropped but is not engaged, and likely won't entirely engage until full labor starts, as it often goes for second pregnancies. I am not yet effaced, he says the cervix is still "pretty thick." That will take time. But I must say, you know, it takes a lot of work to get rid of those centimeters. Any little bit I accomplish now, I think to myself, "yes! alright!"

Ben and I are very nervous and excited. I need to ramp up cleaning up my desk at work and getting the house ready for baby. 'Course I'm not sure what else to do, especially since I can't lift anything anymore! And solstice/x-mas presents are certainly not done, the cards aren't done! Get this: the doc is going on vacation over the holidays! Oh, no! But he'll be back the week of the 7th, my due date. So we're going to try to hold out until then. But you know, you never know!

I got a beautiful quilt from Ben's Aunt Agnes for the baby. It has beautiful Classic Pooh peices and two other fabric patterns with a floral aspect and very hip and bright colors with pale and muted shades of green and orange and purple and pink. I can't do it justice--it's lovely. Just seeing it got me excited.

I'm working on chrocheting little mittens to go with the bunting I got, so I'd better get cracking on those! They are already pretty cute. They are only half done.

More Sickness Being Passed Back and Forth

Tyler had a light cough, I was miserable with it, and Ben seemed completely well, when last week Tyler seemed to pick up a new strain from a little boy at daycare. He immediately passed it on to Ben, of course. I'm still going along as I have. This weekend Tyler was much worse. Constant drainage, puffiness, difficulty breathing during the night and at naps and when he eats, congestion, and a fever of 101.4 on Friday and again Saturday. I put on White Christmas, a 40s Bing Crosby movie, and he sat lethargically in my arms on the couch and watched it with me. He likes the dancing and singing. (I think we have a musicals fan on our hands.) Poor kid was just miserable when he woke up this morning.

What They Call Pre-Labor

Saturday night I got painful, crampy contractions that spanned around the lower belly and the lower back, that would come, build up to painful, then fade, and came regularly for about 2 hours, then tapered off. I got pretty excited/panicky until I read in What to Expect When You're Expecting that this falls under "prelabor" and can go on for as much as a month! So, completely normal, especially in 2nd pregnancies. Have a few other things they list under "prelabor." It's confusing to figure out what's what, between prelabor, false labor, early labor, and first stage labor.

Prelabor Nightmare

So I had some of this prelabor off and on during the night, and had a whole string of nightmares spanning from a dog that was all over me, to a serial killer woman with a knife coming into the house, to being in detention in a boarding school and having my belongings seized by the secret police, to being diagnosed with a virulent cancer, to rescuing Tyler from drowning when a strange women snuck in and tried to give him a bath. All clearly anxiety-driven.

The first nightmare seemed to be about the labor, symbolically. In the dream it was pitch black, and I couldn't see. (A recurring fear of mine.) In the dark there was a big dog, and he was excited about me, and kept trying to approach me. I couldn't tell if it wanted to hurt me or just jump on me in excitement, or whether in its excitement it would forget to be gentle and take to eating me after all. I heard Ben's voice reassuring me that it was a great dane, a "gentle giant" and wouldn't hurt, but I was so afraid I would get hurt. And my nervousness was making the dog nervous. (In real life I love great danes.) But in the dream, I wasn't reassured, and thought we don't know what kind of canine it is, and whether it is carniverous. That night, as I was having the dream, Ben woke me up as I was whimpering in my sleep. This happened more than once, as I kept falling asleep back into the same dream, blending Ben's reassurances into his voice in the dream. I knew instinctively that the dog symbolized my imminent labor.

"Mom-Mom's yucky!"

This is something I should send in to the bloopers/kids say the darnest things section of Parents magazine: Tyler has begun to declare "Mom-Mom yucky!" whenever I have one of my hacking cough and throat clearing sessions. Sometimes he imitates me, too!

In an embarrassing development, I now seem to have no bladder control when I cough. In the past two days I went through 6 pairs of undies and 2 pants yesterday. Ben was doing laundry for me last night when he got the brilliant idea that I should wear some pads. Imagine. Next he'll be doing brain surgery...on me!

I don't know why this new development. It's terribly embarrassing! My only guess is that the baby's head is pressing down now when it wasn't before. Ben thinks I'm just "loosening up." Sure it is that I am!

I'm going to a friend's holiday movie watching party next weekend. If she reads this entry, I wonder if I will find plastic sheets over the chairs! Tee hee hee!

I Hate Being Sick

Have I mentioned I hate being sick??? How much credit can I get toward complaining? I coughed all night and woke up with a head-splitter of an ache cutting through my left eye, left temple, over my skull and down into my neck on the left. My teeth ache from all the cough drops. Being sick means more smells bother me again and I'm neaseaus more often. Imagine what gagging does to my headache and throat. Imagine what all the coughing is doing to my nightly heartburn. When laying down, when I cough I can feel my pelvis bones, which are loose, move against each other in a creepy way. The only way to keep them still, and prevent a painful pull on the stretched muscles in my groin/lower abdomen, is to tuck up my legs against my belly whenever I cough at night. I can't take anything and the little bit that they allow me doesn't do a thing. (Ben ran out twice to get me things, giving up dinner and going again in the middle of the night. I can't bear to tell him he went to all that effort and it's not working.) I'm at work today and people keep asking if I'm better. That would be a big "NO." Why do they ask? I have now used up all of my PTO days and am eating into unpaid days. This s-u-c-k-s.

P.S. My mom and dad have the same thing. Ben seems all better. Tyler is a trooper and tho he coughs, seems better than all of us. Certainly more cheerful despite having a zombie for a mommy.

P.P.S. And it really s-u-c-k-s that I don't have any friends who can come over and help at a moment's notice.

P.P.P.S. And poor Tyler has chosen now as the time to strike out on his own and sit in his own chair for a bedtime story and sleep in his toddler bed on his own. But he needs a lot of reassurance. I'm so worried I'm falling short of what he needs!

P.P.P.P.S. And when on earth am I going to be able to get Tyler some snow boots?

Another Quickie Ultrasound

This morning had another quickie ultrasound in the doc's office. They are being super careful about me and baby. Good news: baby is now head-down. No more worries about breech birth! Also growth is fine, baby is 75 percentile for growth. Doc is happy. I lost a couple pounds, attributed to being sick. Also had another NST (non-stress test) where they track baby movements for 20 minutes. An aside: Got a face mask in the lobby and coughed into that the whole time. I'm sure the other moms appreciated this; I would have. It's a pet peeve of mine; I hate it when people cough on me when I'm clearly pregnant and vulnerable! I wanted to skip appt but they insisted they wanted to see me.

Questions for next week:
How many more ultrasounds?/Why all the ultrasounds?
Is baby "engaged" yet?
How to get tour of hospital for my parents?
Are low-grade cramps okay?
Are constant braxton-hicks any indication that I could go early? (What of all the 2nd-time moms telling me they went early?)

Another Quickie Ultrasound: Photo

This is a profile of the baby's more chubby face, with the baby facing to the left. Look for the outline of the forehead down to the nose, and the lips and chin, along the left.

Now I Have It!

I've just been miserable since coming down w/ Ben's coughing cold. Tyler has it too but not so bad. Ugh. Yuck. Please please let this be over soon.