More waiting...

Had the last of my every-two-weeks prenatal appointments this morning (was supposed to be Friday, but they had to reschedule). After this I go once a week for the duration.

They didn't do the ultrasound today---the doctor's out of town for a family emergency---just a strep test. The baby's heartbeat continues to be strong, around 152 bpm. My blood pressure is the highest it's ever been---128/80. Yeah, I know lots of people would think that's great, but when your bp is normally 90-100 over 50-60, those numbers are alarming. I talked to the doctor about my swelling and pain and the little bumps I am getting around my eyes. She said she wasn't too worried about the swelling from a health perspective, since my bp isn't above normal and there's no protein in my urine. I just don't know how much longer I am going to be able to get around, though. The pain and all the excess weight (57 pounds, at this point) is keeping me from being very mobile.

Next week the doctor will do the ultrasound and see if the baby is getting into position. He definitely hasn't dropped yet, in fact he's still up high enough that it's giving me some trouble breathing. I hope like crazy he doesn't come late---at this point, I would be very pleased if he was about a week early. :)

I am definitely starting to nest like crazy. We have most of the big items we need and I've decided that the next thing I want to do is concentrate on the baby room decor. I've got some cute shelves I want to paint and hang on the wall, plus some little wooden letters that spell out Ian's name. I'm thinking of getting these little Winnie-the-Pooh pictures, too. I'm also thinking of splurging on the crib bedding we want and some decent bedding for the twin bed in the baby room. The room just doesn't look quite *finished* yet---it doesn't look ready for a baby, and that has me a little panicked, since according to the nurse practitioner, I could go into labor any time now.

Trying to wait patiently...

Had an appointment with the nurse practitioner on Friday. She just measured my belly and listened to the baby's heartbeat. Everything seemed fine. She did say that when she listened for the heartbeat she heard what sounded like Braxton-Hicks contractions, which I thought I had been having. What happens with these is that basically your belly gets all hard for a few seconds. Sometimes all over, sometimes just the lower or upper part. It's uncomfortable, but it doesn't really hurt most of the time.

My biggest issues lately are being tired and having problems with my feet. I only have one pair of shoes that I can really stand to wear any more, my poor feet are so swollen up. They really hurt in the morning when I get out of bed; some mornings I feel like I'm not going to be able to walk on them. I also actually get welts around my ankles just from my socks! I've tried elevating my legs, but it doesn't really seem to help very much. I guess it's just one of those things you have to put up with.

My due date is only six weeks from tomorrow! I am kind of anxious about labor, but most of all I am anxious about the huge, awesome responsibility of having a tiny, helpless person completely dependent on me. I don't know how I am going to adjust to the demands on my independence. And Clint and I are already a little worried about relationship maintenance---it's going to be very hard to get any time alone together, especially without any family close by to give us a little break for couple of hours. Yikes! I've been thinking about talking to some of the other women I know who are pregnant and seeing if we can do some babysitting exchanges, so we can each occasionally get dinner and a movie out with our husbands. I think I'd rather hand the baby over to someone else who was a recent mother than to some high school babysitter...

My next OB appt is May 28th, when they'll do the last ultrasound to check the baby's position. I'm excited about the ultrasound---we haven't seen him since 28 weeks! After the 28th, I'll have an appointment every week until the baby is born.

Eventful weekend

Two bits of baby news this weekend. The first one was, I started having pains in my left side and stomach, accompanied by mild contractions. I called the hospital, and they said to go ahead and come in, since early labor can be a little weird. We had a brief scary period when it looked like the contractions were about 6 minutes apart, but it turned out I was just having bad ligament pains (when your uterus is stretching out) which were triggering the contractions. Both the pain and the contractions seem to have gone away now. A funny thing was, while they had me all hooked up to the monitors, the baby got the hiccups. I've felt that before, and now I know what it is. He's had them quite a bit, actually. I hope that doesn't mean he's going to have a lot of colic.

The other thing that happened this weekend is that I started lactating. I guess it's just colostrum, since it looks pretty clear. Anyway, I'm going to ask the OB about it when I go in Friday. Maybe there's a chance that I would be able to breastfeed after all, in which case I need to ask my other doctor about maybe changing my meds to something that's safe in breastmilk, at least for a while after the baby is born. Even if it didn't work and I had to change back to my old meds, at least the baby would have gotten a few days or even weeks of breastmilk at the beginning.

Oh, gosh, I think the baby has the hiccups *again*!

A pregnancy moment...

Night before last, I sat down in our recliner to watch TV after I took my shower. I was wearing a sports bra and a pair of panties (with my huge belly taking up most of the space in between), I had a towel wrapped around my wet hair like a turban, my face was all red and blotchy, and I was wearing clogs because my feet are getting too swollen up for "real" shoes. Well, also because I can't reach my feet to get real shoes on. So there I am, watching TV in between complaining about my hemorrhoids (oh, pregnancy is so full of little joys!), and Clint says out of the blue: "Honey, do you have any idea how hot you look?"

!!!.....Well, my first instinct was to laugh---which I did---and tell him he sounds just like a desperate guy whose wife is seven months pregnant. Which I also did. But my next thought was: is that just sweeter than all hell, or what?

Bouncing baby boy!

Yesterday I was feeling kind of down, and I decided the only solution was: ice cream! So, when I got off work, I went by this little local ice cream stand and got a huge banana split to take home (forgetting that Clint is on a diet! Oops! Sorry, Honey!). When I got home, it turned out Clint had also gotten me a huge box of Dots, one of my favorite candies. So, needless to say, I got my sugar fix last night!

The baby usually is very active in the evenings after dinner, but last night I guess all the sugar just made him go nuts! He kicked all during birthing class last night, and then when we came home and I was taking a bath, it was hilarious to watch him make my stomach shift all around! Clint watched and laughed and called him, "Crazy Baby!" We wondered what he was doing in there. I felt kind of bad about getting the poor little baby all wound up like that, though. I better not OD on sugar like that again.

Crazy Baby (apologies to Joan Osborne)

And your hands are really shaking something awful
as you give your twenty-seventh little kick.
Oh, how long have you been sitting in the darkness?
You forget.
And you know you're getting really hard to carry.
And I feel it every time you turn around.
And you wonder why I cannot pick my butt up off the ground.

Oh, my crazy baby, try to hold on tight.
etc...

Friday's doctor visit

***SPOILER ALERT***GYNECOLOGY DETAILS AHEAD

I've just discovered one reason why I might not have been feeling good: I have had a bad bacterial infection for the past couple of months. If you're pregnant or will be in the future, here's a little cautionary tale that I hope will encourage you to stick to your guns and make your doctor check things out if you feel like something might be wrong. For a while now, I've been thinking something's "not quite right" down there (I won't get graphic on you about why), and kept telling my doc about it every time I went in for an appointment. They just kept telling me my symptoms were normal, and since I've never been pregnant before, I didn't really know any different. Finally, things were getting so bad that I *knew* something was up---they didn't mention anything like this in my pregnancy book---so when I went in Friday I was a lot more insistent and they did a pelvic and discovered that I had an infection. I don't think it will hurt the baby, but it has certainly made my life more unpleasant than it needed to be for the last several months. No wonder I've felt so run down!

Anyway, other than that, everything was good; the baby still has a nice strong heartbeat (must take after his momma---I inherited my dad's side of the family's ridiculously good cardiovascular health), and all my vitals checked out okay. We didn't have to go to birthing class on Thursday because it was on breastfeeding; we only have two more classes after this. We won't have another ultrasound until 36 weeks, about a month before the baby is due. Getting to where there's nothing to do but wait.

In the home stretch (pun intended) now!

Today I enter the last trimester of pregnancy; Baby McGuire's due date is exactly three months away! As if to celebrate, he has been kicking nonstop for the last two days; I wake up in the morning to little knocks on my ribs and go to bed at night with a similar symphony of jolts to my midsection. It also seems like I am starting to be able to feel what position he is lying in. His favorite position seems to be upside down with his head on the left side down low, and his feet up in the air on the right side, kicking me up under the ribs. Last night Clint and I could have sworn we felt the smooth, hard little crown of his head at the base of my stomach. I gave him a gentle little poke and he moved a couple of inches over (what a mean mommy I am! :P )

On the other hand, I have been feeling pretty lousy this week. Started Monday with a migraine (my first since I've been pregnant) that was screwing up my vision so bad I ended up going home half way through the day. Then today I have been struck by awful morning sickness...I was afraid I was going to have to get off the phone with someone and go barf. Also, I feel like I have gained ten pounds the past week! I have gone up another bra size, and had to get Clint to help me put my pants on this morning because I didn't think I could reach my feet without hurting myself. Three more months, three more months...

Baby room update

I just realized I forgot to let everyone know what we ended up doing with the baby room the weekend my mom was here. As we had planned, we went ahead and painted the room a warm cream color, which really lightened it up and made it seem roomier than the murky blue that was on the walls before. We had planned to do a border, too, but my mom the wallpaper expert said our plaster walls were to rough for a border to adhere properly. So, at this point we are debating about whether we want to do some stencils or even a mural.

In the meantime, we have put up the Pack-N-Play in the room, since it has a bassinet in it that we can use for the first month or so until the baby gets old enough for a crib. It is a green-and-yellow gingham pattern with Winnie the Pooh on it, and it looks really good with the cream-colored walls. Target carries some really cute Classic Pooh sheets that I think will look good on the crib (a white Jenny Lind crib that my mom is giving us) after we take the Pack-N-Play out. We also have a cherry-wood twin bed in the room, which I think I will get some dark green sheets for, an oak rocker, a small white bookshelf that is already starting to collect picture books, and an antique maple art-deco style half-wardrobe that we have put my collection of stuffed bunnies on. We still have some work to do, but it is slowly starting to look like a baby room!

Strictly for my honey

Random Law and Order Plot Generator - BenSinclair.com

Oh yeah, and for anyone else out there who loves/likes/watches Law & Order in all of its 150 incarnations! :P

New Sonogram pic

3-D Ultrasound Update

Friday Clint and I went to Charlottesville for our second 3-D ultrasound. The baby starting kicking in the car on the way there, and by the time we we got into the exam room for the ultrasound, he was in full swing. It took the technician and the doctor almost an hour to get him to hold still long enough to get a good look at his heart. We got a good view of the baby vigorously kicking me in the side, as well as of the top of his head as he actually spun around like a top(!) The doctor said, "You are going to have your hands full!" We also saw the baby's face, including getting to see him stick his tongue out, and we are definitely sure he is a boy now, since he seemed to take particular delight in showing us his little buttcrack and equipment. I know you probably can't really tell that much about a baby's personality from an ultrasound, but I left with the feeling that our little guy is a real character. I just hope he isn't so rambunctious he drives us both nuts! On the more serious side, everything seemed to be normal, and this is the last time we will need to go to Charlottesville for testing.

Some baby details

Day before yesterday I bought a stethoscope so we could listen to the baby's heartbeat. It took a little manuevering and patience, but I finally heard it. I let Clint listen, and for a while he had a frustrated look on his face like he wasn't sure what he was listening for (the baby's heartbeat is usually a little softer and faster than mom's, which you still hear). I started to feel silly with him listening to my belly, and moved the stehoscope away, when he said, "No, don't!" I put it back and he listened a little more, and then got a big smile on his face, and said he could hear it. Just...wow.

My mom is coming up this weekend to visit and help us work on the nursery. We think we are going to go with cream-colored paint and a blue border. The room is actually painted blue now, but it's a very murky shade of blue that is kind of gloomy for a baby's room. I am putting the pressure on Clint to get the rest of his junk out of the baby room so we can get started! Yikes, do we need a bigger place! Someday...

Thursday I have a doctor's appt here in town with the nurse practitioner, and then Friday Clint and I are driving to Charlottesville for the last ultrasound (22 weeks). It's supposed to be a really neat one. I hope so. The last one wasn't all that impressive, although I guess they could tell it was a boy and I sort of saw it's little ET alien face. I am going to talk to the nurse practitioner about my back problems, and see if she can send me to get some massage. I keep getting muscle spasms in my upper back, even though I do my yoga almost every day, and I've also been experiencing this terrific aching pressure on my tailbone---I have to sit a lot at my job, and at home (I'm studying for my German exam), and I think the extra weight on my backside is taking its toll.

Pure mush

Clint's been having a rough couple of days here, and trying to be there for him and feeling his hurt as if it were my own, I am realizing once again how connected at the heart I am with this man. I never thought I could love someone this intensely for this long, and I know my feelings will be just as strong if not more so for this child that is coming. I'm just overwhlemed by it sometimes, I really am.

(Love you, Honey. Hang in there!)

Doh!

Dangit! I accidentally slipped up on the phone to Clint's mom...and now the word is out. We're having a boy. I did have a long talk with them about how we don't want all blue clothes and trucks and trains. We want our baby to discover for himself what he likes and doesn't like, not have anyone tell him "big boys don't cry," or "only girls play with dolls." I started crying on the phone, realizing already the heartbreak of trying to raise a sane, happy child in this world. I hope he will look at his mommy working and paying bills and his daddy cooking and cleaning and not pay too much attention to the sexist social programming all around him.

I was talking to Clint about this last night, and I really hope when our child is older we can live somewhere with a Unitarian church again. I know Clint doesn't always get everything he needs there spiritually, but I think in terms of teaching children the values we both share (environmentalism, peace, tolerance, social activism, acceptance of difference, the value of religious inquiry and finding the truth for yourself), UU's are miles ahead of most other denominations. And the people are really nice, too. We just felt really comfortable with the people at our old congregation. Our church here is okay, and the pastor and his family seem really nice, but we don't have the sense of community we had there. And I think you need to be connected to a community when you're raising a child, especially when you're as far away from your extended family as we are.

Halfway there

Sunday, Kathy reached the halfway point in her/our pregnancy. It's been an interesting 4 1/2 months, and the biggest changes, I think, are yet to come.

I've been struggling a bit trying to thinsomething to report from my side of the wom, but I think I will use this post to record my feelings here at the halfway point.

Naturally, I am elated at the prospect of seeing this little baby of mine come out at the end of June. Watching Kathy's belly swell with our little bundle of joy is a wonderful feeling, and I keep thinking about how I want to spend time with our child. However, I have some less-comfortable feelings within me as the baby grows.

The past week, I have experienced something I haven't felt in many years, namely panic attacks. I have a fear of my own mortality, and when I was living by myself in the mountains of North Carolina, I was often struck by panic attacks as I tried to go to sleep, thinking of dying alone, with no one to remember me.

For some reason, I had those feelings again this past week, again as I lay down to sleep. I want to believe in an afterlife, and I pray that my soul shall live on after my body has drawn its last breath, but the analytical part of me gets in the way, sometimes.

Then, I have also noticed in the past few days, flashing back to my own childhood. The oddest things trigger it. The other night, we ran out of milk and I had to run to the convenience store and picked up a carton. We usually buy it buy the plastic jug, as I'm sure most people do these days. In any case, as I was driving home with it, I found myself flashing back to my childhood, when my father drove a milk truck and would let me climb in the back sometimes to grab my fill of chocolate milk and lemonade.

Another time, I was in the bathtub, cleaning myself off, and I found myself looking at the washed-off soap floating on the surface, looking like nebulae forming in the heavens, and remembered how I would do this back when I was a child and determined to go to those stars in person.

I just wonder how many of these feelings I'm going to have before the pregnancy is over, and if they'll continue as we see our baby grow and have those same kinds of experiences that we had 30+ years ago.

OOWWW!!!

Any of you out there who've been pregnant: when the baby kicks, is is supposed to feel like...well, like a tiny person is angrily kicking the inside of your pussy? With little steel-toed Doc Martens? Owwww, stop it! Negative 4 1/2 months old and already a troublemaker!

Latest Update

Friday I went to see the obstetrician here in town to talk to him about our test results on Wednesday. He said everything looks good and "keep up the good work." (I said, "Uh, I'm just trying to get by day-to-day, actually.")

He also listened to the baby's heartbeat, and boy, was it loud this time! I thought it was my heartbeat at first. So that's more good news. I have another appointment in a month with his new nurse practitioner (he had one of his partners retire and the other one, move away, so he's been in practice by himself the past few months---which has created some problems when he has someone go into labor during office hours!) Everyone says she's really nice. I am going to talk to her about birthing options.

Also, if I didn't mention it before, we are signed up for childbirth classes at the hospital---they start in March.

Ultrasound results

Yippee! We passed the ultrasound with flying colors---none of the markers of any genetic or congenital disorders were present! At this point, our risk of having a baby with any genetic problem has been lowered to about 1:2000, which is less than the risk that a 20 year-old mother would have without having had the screening test. It turns out they want to do one more ultrasound---at 22 weeks---just to make sure, because there were two markers they couldn't see yet. But things look pretty good. The baby was once again very active, to the point that the technician was having trouble getting it to stay still long enough to see some of the markers! Hope it calms down a little by the time it's born! :)

Also, we found out the sex of the baby. But...we're not saying, because we don't want our families to know, and a couple of Clint's family members check in here occasionally. So, hate us if you want, but you're all going to have to wait!

Test results back

Just got back the results of the quadruple screen (for genetic problems and birth defects)...and everything is completely normal! So, the last big test is the ultrasound, which we get tomorrow.

6-months of married...okay, not *bliss* always, but love, anyway! :)

Today is Clint's and my six-month wedding anniversary. Thinking about it, I realized we have been pregnant for 2/3 of our married life so far! That is pretty crazy, huh?

My mom and I were talking about it this weekend, and we were both really amazed that I got pregnant that fast. My mom went into menopause at age 43, so I expected that I was coming to the end of my fertility and would find it hard to conceive. I had already talked to my doctor about fertility treatments, and we were only going to give nature about six months. I guess that's part of why I've been kinda neurotic about having a miscarriage or something being wrong with the baby...it seems too easy so far (well, ok, not the morning sickness part). Today I go in for the triple screen, a blood test that is the first test they do for genetic problems. Here's hoping everything is okay...