Wow- so it's been about 15 weeks since I posted. That's pretty amazing. And not in a good way- I didn't mean to leave anyone hanging!
Basically, for whatever reason, I stopped being able to post at work (I think it's when google changed over to a newer version) and to be perfectly honest- the thought of sitting down for a half hour at night and blogging just wasn't going to work. If I was going to post, it had better pass some time at the office :)
I recently received an e-mail from someone who stumbled on my blog and was wondering what the HELL happened with the last scan and where I was and so sure enough, when I tried to log in this morning it- worked! So, here's the rest of the story...
We saw the perinatologist in late February. He took one look at the previous scans and said her heart was beautiful. Perfect heart. He saw the spot on the tummy that they were talking about but wasn't convinced it was anything major. He decided to take a look for himself and sure enough, he couldn't even find it. He asked why we had declined first tri screening and basically said that without doing an amnio, he couldn't be 100% sure of anything. BUT, being a high-risk doctor and essentially an "amnio-pusher" (his words, not mine), he would NOT recommend an amnio in our case, because in his opinion- the risk of the amnio outweighed the risk that something was actually wrong. He said that most babies with severe defects are IUGR (inter-uterine growth restricted) and my baby was in no way, shape, or form growth restricted. We were most concerned about Down's syndrome since her structural functions were looking good and he said that most babies with Down's have shorter arms and legs by chromosonal make-up. He re-meausred her legs about 3 times, each time saying she had super model gams just like her mama. :)
We left the appointment very hopeful. For the first time, I allowed myself to be super excited about the pregnancy and what is to come.
The last 12 weeks or so have been a whirlwind- a beautiful nursery, an amazing shower, LOTS and LOTS of crazy house prepping for a bambino. We are 29 days from our due date. I am equal parts thrilled, scared shitless and supremely uncomfortable :)
Our little girl will be here before we know it. It's hard to fathom just how drastically our lives are about to change. I just can't get that nagging, "If there's nothing wrong, then why did 3 scans show that something was?" out of my head. I am trying. I am trying VERY hard.
My dr's appointment went really well yesterday- hard to believe I'm already up to weekly visits. My bp was still good (108/50), no protein or sugar in my urine, weight gain at a respectable 23.5 lbs and while I haven't dilated, she could feel the baby's head locked and loaded into position. We are thrilled.
I am tired. Not sleeping- although, I am not having a ton of "late" pregnancy symptoms. No heartburn, no swelling, etc. I am having a bit of lower back pain which comes from having to lug this extra weight around and I'm a little weepy but I'm pretty sure that's par for the course.
It feels good to write again. This period of pregnancy is hard physically, but also emotionally. It's like standing on the edge of a cliff- knowing that when you jump NOTHING is ever going to be the same. And you could jump today or it could be another 5 weeks before you finally do. And nothing is guaranteed. I know none of us are promised tomorrow- but I just want my baby in my arms, healthy... and I guess then we can figure out what in the world we're supposed to DO with a newborn :)
I better run- my Maternity Leave replacement is coming up to meet with me this morning (only 11 more days at the office- less if you consider the fact that I have jury duty next week (uh yeah.. more on that later) and I have a few last minute instructions that I need to finish. It's starting to become really REAL. Yikes!
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Thursday, February 16, 2012
Update... not-so-excellent news
OB just called- she was not a fan of the scans from last week and sent them to the high-risk guy. He took a look at them and decided that he'd like to see me himself. On Tuesday. Like tomorrow is Friday and Monday is a holiday, but the day after that TUESDAY. I'm glad there's no torturous wait, but after doing a little googling, our Georgetown hot-shot doctor has a 9 week wait-list. Hope that he and my OB are just friends and I shouldn't be reading into this anymore than I am...
When I called my sister to tell her she answered by asking if I wanted my baby shower over-the-top girly...
Yes. I'd like it over-the-top girly. I'd also like a healthy baby, more than anything, please.
When I called my sister to tell her she answered by asking if I wanted my baby shower over-the-top girly...
Yes. I'd like it over-the-top girly. I'd also like a healthy baby, more than anything, please.
Monday, February 13, 2012
Some good news! :)
So, I don't know where to start this post other than we have some EXCELLENT news to share!
Friday's scan went great. We were so lucky to have an AWESOME tech who could definitely feel our anxiety and did his best to put our minds at ease. Our last scan took an hour to complete for EVERYTHING and this one took almost an hour and half... just on her heart and tummy. We have one wiggly little girl in there :)
We got great news that her heart looks perfect. Her positioning last time probably wasn't that great, but her right ventricle is there, properly sized, functioning perfectly and all the veins and arteries look just as they should. One big hurdle we crossed there!
The spot in her stomach- is still there. After the scan, I asked the tech about her tummy and he said, "I saw it, but I'm not sure it's something that I would have even mentioned in my report if this was the first time we saw it." He did want the radiologist to see it in real time, as opposed to the pictures he snapped. She was available and spent time with us looking at it. She has no idea what it is, but it's only affecting her small bowel, which is apparently a good thing. Without any other soft markers, she has no real idea what could be causing it. We will follow up with another ultrasound next month. Her growth pattern is perfect- right in the 50th percentile for all major organs/systems and she weighs a whopping 1lb 9oz!
I'd love to say that I walked out of the appointment feeling overjoyed, but I just wish that we had gotten the complete all clear. Obviously, I'd much rather her still have the tummy issues rather than the heart issues, but I just can't seem to relax. The radiologist and the tech both told me NOT TO WORRY and to enjoy my pregnancy but I'm just not there yet.
Our weekend was a really good one- Friday night one of M's co-workers hosted a wine and appetizers party. There must've been something in the water... out of about 50 people, I counted 7 pregnant women besides me! It was nice to get a break after the build-up to the ultrasound and M's friends are so sweet. I didn't know what he had or hadn't mentioned to people at work and when we got there they were so excited. (I think he forewarned them if we didn't show up, it wasn't good news!) So lots of hugs and lots of promises of more prayers to go around. Saturday I finally slept in for the first time in ages. We putzed around the house and met my parents for an early dinner. Stopped by the mall to return some things to the maternity store and then got home and stayed put- it was so cold and windy. Yesterday, we finished our taxes (thank goodness... we are getting a nice refund! Unfortunately, none of that money will go for anything "fun", but it couldn't have come at a better time). Last night, M insisted that we go look at baby furniture... which was interesting.
Because of the fact that I am horribly good at denial, I haven't wanted to do anything baby related. Other than starting a tupperware bin full of adorable pink things (to include glittery pink sneakers-love them!), I've basically done nothing to get ready for the baby. I've read blogs of people who knew that there child didn't have a prayer and they still made nurseries. I didn't get that. I mean... isn't that a horrible painful reminder of what could have been? M and I had a long discussion about that and he said it's about holding out hope and that people cope in their own way. Apparently mine was to act like I wasn't pregnant until we got the all clear.
Even though we pretty much did, I still have been dragging my feet. So, off we went to Babies R Us. That place is completely overwhelming and every fear I have ever had about being a mother completely sunk in yesterday. It was bizzare. I felt like M and I had a complete role reversal. You know where the guy goes shopping with his insanely pregnant wife and she's cooing over swings and pack-n-plays and all color has drained from his face? That was me. I guess I just don't know where to start.
I did decide that I want to paint her room a pale pink (I was all for gender neutral in case we have another baby at some point, but who cares? We can always re-paint) and I love this wall art http://www.amazon.com/RoomMates-RMK1439SLM-Scroll-Stick-MegaPack/dp/B003NGTNFG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329145623&sr=8-1. When we went to Babies R Us, it turns out they have the whole line of bedding, lamps, etc in the same pattern. I think the owls are just adorable. So that was exciting :)
We found furniture we love and are very lucky that my parents have agreed to spring for the crib. Now it's just on to more fun stuff- registering, shower ideas for my sister, getting her room ready, starting our baby care & childbirth classes, naming her :) (I hope that she will eventually be EBH, but I'm not sure M is on board yet...)
I have my 6 month (holy cow!) check up this afternoon and am hoping that my doctor was able to let the perinatologist weigh in on the scans as well.
A big thank you for all the love, support and prayers. We are so blessed to have great news to share and are hoping that after our next scan we will truly be given the "all clear". We know that there are no guarantees in life and I promise that I am going to try and start enjoying this pregnancy thing once and for all.. after all, we'll be meeting our little girl in less than 15 weeks! :)
Friday's scan went great. We were so lucky to have an AWESOME tech who could definitely feel our anxiety and did his best to put our minds at ease. Our last scan took an hour to complete for EVERYTHING and this one took almost an hour and half... just on her heart and tummy. We have one wiggly little girl in there :)
We got great news that her heart looks perfect. Her positioning last time probably wasn't that great, but her right ventricle is there, properly sized, functioning perfectly and all the veins and arteries look just as they should. One big hurdle we crossed there!
The spot in her stomach- is still there. After the scan, I asked the tech about her tummy and he said, "I saw it, but I'm not sure it's something that I would have even mentioned in my report if this was the first time we saw it." He did want the radiologist to see it in real time, as opposed to the pictures he snapped. She was available and spent time with us looking at it. She has no idea what it is, but it's only affecting her small bowel, which is apparently a good thing. Without any other soft markers, she has no real idea what could be causing it. We will follow up with another ultrasound next month. Her growth pattern is perfect- right in the 50th percentile for all major organs/systems and she weighs a whopping 1lb 9oz!
I'd love to say that I walked out of the appointment feeling overjoyed, but I just wish that we had gotten the complete all clear. Obviously, I'd much rather her still have the tummy issues rather than the heart issues, but I just can't seem to relax. The radiologist and the tech both told me NOT TO WORRY and to enjoy my pregnancy but I'm just not there yet.
Our weekend was a really good one- Friday night one of M's co-workers hosted a wine and appetizers party. There must've been something in the water... out of about 50 people, I counted 7 pregnant women besides me! It was nice to get a break after the build-up to the ultrasound and M's friends are so sweet. I didn't know what he had or hadn't mentioned to people at work and when we got there they were so excited. (I think he forewarned them if we didn't show up, it wasn't good news!) So lots of hugs and lots of promises of more prayers to go around. Saturday I finally slept in for the first time in ages. We putzed around the house and met my parents for an early dinner. Stopped by the mall to return some things to the maternity store and then got home and stayed put- it was so cold and windy. Yesterday, we finished our taxes (thank goodness... we are getting a nice refund! Unfortunately, none of that money will go for anything "fun", but it couldn't have come at a better time). Last night, M insisted that we go look at baby furniture... which was interesting.
Because of the fact that I am horribly good at denial, I haven't wanted to do anything baby related. Other than starting a tupperware bin full of adorable pink things (to include glittery pink sneakers-love them!), I've basically done nothing to get ready for the baby. I've read blogs of people who knew that there child didn't have a prayer and they still made nurseries. I didn't get that. I mean... isn't that a horrible painful reminder of what could have been? M and I had a long discussion about that and he said it's about holding out hope and that people cope in their own way. Apparently mine was to act like I wasn't pregnant until we got the all clear.
Even though we pretty much did, I still have been dragging my feet. So, off we went to Babies R Us. That place is completely overwhelming and every fear I have ever had about being a mother completely sunk in yesterday. It was bizzare. I felt like M and I had a complete role reversal. You know where the guy goes shopping with his insanely pregnant wife and she's cooing over swings and pack-n-plays and all color has drained from his face? That was me. I guess I just don't know where to start.
I did decide that I want to paint her room a pale pink (I was all for gender neutral in case we have another baby at some point, but who cares? We can always re-paint) and I love this wall art http://www.amazon.com/RoomMates-RMK1439SLM-Scroll-Stick-MegaPack/dp/B003NGTNFG/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1329145623&sr=8-1. When we went to Babies R Us, it turns out they have the whole line of bedding, lamps, etc in the same pattern. I think the owls are just adorable. So that was exciting :)
We found furniture we love and are very lucky that my parents have agreed to spring for the crib. Now it's just on to more fun stuff- registering, shower ideas for my sister, getting her room ready, starting our baby care & childbirth classes, naming her :) (I hope that she will eventually be EBH, but I'm not sure M is on board yet...)
I have my 6 month (holy cow!) check up this afternoon and am hoping that my doctor was able to let the perinatologist weigh in on the scans as well.
A big thank you for all the love, support and prayers. We are so blessed to have great news to share and are hoping that after our next scan we will truly be given the "all clear". We know that there are no guarantees in life and I promise that I am going to try and start enjoying this pregnancy thing once and for all.. after all, we'll be meeting our little girl in less than 15 weeks! :)
Friday, February 10, 2012
Things
I've been thinking a lot about things and have quite the list going in my head...
Something I love: Playing mancala every night on my iPhone with M once we've gotten into bed. I especially love beating him 3 times in a row last night and being the winner for the third night in a row. BOOOYAAAAAAA!
Something I treasure: My Grandma's wedding ring, carefully worn on my right ring finger. It's a tiny wisp of gold for a tiny wisp of a lady. Hard to believe that I have her same tiny (size 4) fingers. But there was nothing tiny about her.
Something that makes me laugh: M farting. It sounds so incredibly disgusting, but I seriously turn into an 11 year old boy every time he does it. Especially since his face turns red and he lets out the most goregous belly laugh I've ever heard. Being pregnant now means I can return the favor occasionally. Just typing that, I am sitting at my desk snickering. Farts? Really? But never fails to get a good laugh out of me.
Something that secretly pleases me: When I tell people that I'm 6 months pregnant and they look at me like I'm nuts. I'm carrying pretty small for being 6 months already. I really do sort of look like I swallowed a basketball. And every worry aside and obviously the fact that this is really vain... but I really enjoy it. I've always had a body complex and I've worked fairly hard to not "let myself go". It helps that my weight was always in my middle anyway, so my chicken legs look even chicken-er. Now that I'm really starting to have a bump, I'm feeling quite beautiful.
Something that makes me grateful: That just this morning- nearly EVERY person I've told (in real life) about our worries has miraculously remembered that today is the day without any prodding and has called, emailed or texted to let us know that their prayers are with us and our little girl today. My heart really is pouring out with the amount of love that our little girl already has surrounding her. No matter the outcome, there are so many people who love us and care about us. I've known this all along, but today it has been really evident that there are so many loving people on TEAM BERTHA!
Something that makes me fearful: The unknown. The what ifs. The "where do we go from here"s?
Something that annoys me: I must share this story. There is a woman at my office who is about 5 weeks behind me in her pregnancy. As I was walking past her desk yesterday, she was sobbing. Racking, full on body sobs. Granted, I do not know this woman, but I felt compelled to stop. I asked her what was wrong and she looked up with eyes full of tears and she said she just got off the phone with her doctor. My stomach dropped, my mouth went dry and I had tears in my eyes that were threatening to spill out when she said, "and they couldn't determine gender on my last ultrasound... I don't know if it's a boy or a girl". CHRIST. The thing about it that annoys me isn't that she is so fucking oblivious, it's the fact that I will NEVER have this. I will never have those worries. From the second I had my huge bleed at 11 weeks, I've never again been a laize-faire pregnant woman. I am annoyed that was taken from me. I must admit, I wasn't annoyed at this woman- I was livid with her. I'm pretty sure I mumbled that it would all work out, turned purple and walked away. I did actually contemplate where I could go to scream without anyone hearing me. :)
Something that frustrates me: That I have no control over making sure that I have a healthy pregnancy. I can do everything right- take every vitamin, exercise, eat a healthy diet, stay away from high mercury fish and pollution and things can still go wrong. And a crack addict can have her 7th healthy child in as many years.
Something that brings me joy: Running. Not while I'm doing it, mind you, but when I'm finished. Pure, unadulterated joy.
Something that terrifies me: Having a special needs child. I said it. I figure you guys won't judge, right? If I'm writing what people want to hear, then why I am I writing? I am so fearful of losing Bertha, but even more fearful that she is going to need extra help that I can't give her. Rationally, I know I will do whatever it is that my child needs to have the best life possible but I am TERRIFIED.
Something that calms me: I hate sleeping close to M at night. Absolutely hate it. I prefer to burrito myself in the covers on my own side of the bed. Cuddling? Great... in the morning... if we aren't late (which is basically just weekends). But this morning, when I woke up far before the sun and my alarm clock and got that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I woke him and said, "I need a cuddle". And he spooned me and rubbed my back and all was right in the world. It's pretty great knowing that's all it takes sometimes.
I could go on and on all day making lists but let's face it- we are T minus 3 hours from our next scan. I am at work, mostly because I'd be pulling my hair out at home, and if you could see me- I can't sit still. I alternate between the serene belief that this will all be behind me shortly and the impending terror of specialists, doom and gloom. I keep imagining Bertha as a teen, doing something that really ticks me off and saying to her, "I love you more than you know. I've loved you more than I've ever loved anything or anyone for longer than you've realized." And then showing her this page and getting a good chuckle out of how much worry she caused me, even when she was in the womb. And then we'll hug and braid each others hair and I'll tell her beautiful brown wide eyes that she's still grounded. Because as much as I love her, she still ticks me off. And that's getting me through today.
I got so many comments yesterday via email and my old blog that I just want to say thank you. Thank you- all of you, even the non-commenters (who let me know SOMEONE is reading this) for letting me know I'm not alone. Sometimes it's a lonely feeling but I am NOT alone. I know I've admitted to struggling with my faith lately but I must tell you that as I'm typing, tears are welling up in my eyes because I know JUST how many of you are praying for us today. I can feel the prayers, like a warm, soft blanket wrapped around me in the middle of this storm. It comforts me to know that so many people are lifting us up and it amazes me even more to think about those who are doing it silently, the ones we don't even know about.
A common theme lately has been that no matter what, our friends and family know that I will be okay. Michael and I will be okay. We have a strong foundation in our faith and our marriage and come what may, we will be okay. I have never once doubted that no matter the outcome, we will be okay. After all, no one is promised tomorrow. But to be reminded over and over again that come what may, we will be okay has been extremely comforting. Kind of like once you repeat something over and over again, it starts to become true? :)
So shameless plug here- KEEP PRAYING. Keep sending good thoughts, good vibes, excellent ju-ju, what have you. I am humbled by the lack of faith that I've shown and the people who have picked up the slack for me. We probably won't have any news until at least Monday night, but if we do, I will update.
Thanks for making me feel that I'm not alone.
Something I love: Playing mancala every night on my iPhone with M once we've gotten into bed. I especially love beating him 3 times in a row last night and being the winner for the third night in a row. BOOOYAAAAAAA!
Something I treasure: My Grandma's wedding ring, carefully worn on my right ring finger. It's a tiny wisp of gold for a tiny wisp of a lady. Hard to believe that I have her same tiny (size 4) fingers. But there was nothing tiny about her.
Something that makes me laugh: M farting. It sounds so incredibly disgusting, but I seriously turn into an 11 year old boy every time he does it. Especially since his face turns red and he lets out the most goregous belly laugh I've ever heard. Being pregnant now means I can return the favor occasionally. Just typing that, I am sitting at my desk snickering. Farts? Really? But never fails to get a good laugh out of me.
Something that secretly pleases me: When I tell people that I'm 6 months pregnant and they look at me like I'm nuts. I'm carrying pretty small for being 6 months already. I really do sort of look like I swallowed a basketball. And every worry aside and obviously the fact that this is really vain... but I really enjoy it. I've always had a body complex and I've worked fairly hard to not "let myself go". It helps that my weight was always in my middle anyway, so my chicken legs look even chicken-er. Now that I'm really starting to have a bump, I'm feeling quite beautiful.
Something that makes me grateful: That just this morning- nearly EVERY person I've told (in real life) about our worries has miraculously remembered that today is the day without any prodding and has called, emailed or texted to let us know that their prayers are with us and our little girl today. My heart really is pouring out with the amount of love that our little girl already has surrounding her. No matter the outcome, there are so many people who love us and care about us. I've known this all along, but today it has been really evident that there are so many loving people on TEAM BERTHA!
Something that makes me fearful: The unknown. The what ifs. The "where do we go from here"s?
Something that annoys me: I must share this story. There is a woman at my office who is about 5 weeks behind me in her pregnancy. As I was walking past her desk yesterday, she was sobbing. Racking, full on body sobs. Granted, I do not know this woman, but I felt compelled to stop. I asked her what was wrong and she looked up with eyes full of tears and she said she just got off the phone with her doctor. My stomach dropped, my mouth went dry and I had tears in my eyes that were threatening to spill out when she said, "and they couldn't determine gender on my last ultrasound... I don't know if it's a boy or a girl". CHRIST. The thing about it that annoys me isn't that she is so fucking oblivious, it's the fact that I will NEVER have this. I will never have those worries. From the second I had my huge bleed at 11 weeks, I've never again been a laize-faire pregnant woman. I am annoyed that was taken from me. I must admit, I wasn't annoyed at this woman- I was livid with her. I'm pretty sure I mumbled that it would all work out, turned purple and walked away. I did actually contemplate where I could go to scream without anyone hearing me. :)
Something that frustrates me: That I have no control over making sure that I have a healthy pregnancy. I can do everything right- take every vitamin, exercise, eat a healthy diet, stay away from high mercury fish and pollution and things can still go wrong. And a crack addict can have her 7th healthy child in as many years.
Something that brings me joy: Running. Not while I'm doing it, mind you, but when I'm finished. Pure, unadulterated joy.
Something that terrifies me: Having a special needs child. I said it. I figure you guys won't judge, right? If I'm writing what people want to hear, then why I am I writing? I am so fearful of losing Bertha, but even more fearful that she is going to need extra help that I can't give her. Rationally, I know I will do whatever it is that my child needs to have the best life possible but I am TERRIFIED.
Something that calms me: I hate sleeping close to M at night. Absolutely hate it. I prefer to burrito myself in the covers on my own side of the bed. Cuddling? Great... in the morning... if we aren't late (which is basically just weekends). But this morning, when I woke up far before the sun and my alarm clock and got that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, I woke him and said, "I need a cuddle". And he spooned me and rubbed my back and all was right in the world. It's pretty great knowing that's all it takes sometimes.
I could go on and on all day making lists but let's face it- we are T minus 3 hours from our next scan. I am at work, mostly because I'd be pulling my hair out at home, and if you could see me- I can't sit still. I alternate between the serene belief that this will all be behind me shortly and the impending terror of specialists, doom and gloom. I keep imagining Bertha as a teen, doing something that really ticks me off and saying to her, "I love you more than you know. I've loved you more than I've ever loved anything or anyone for longer than you've realized." And then showing her this page and getting a good chuckle out of how much worry she caused me, even when she was in the womb. And then we'll hug and braid each others hair and I'll tell her beautiful brown wide eyes that she's still grounded. Because as much as I love her, she still ticks me off. And that's getting me through today.
I got so many comments yesterday via email and my old blog that I just want to say thank you. Thank you- all of you, even the non-commenters (who let me know SOMEONE is reading this) for letting me know I'm not alone. Sometimes it's a lonely feeling but I am NOT alone. I know I've admitted to struggling with my faith lately but I must tell you that as I'm typing, tears are welling up in my eyes because I know JUST how many of you are praying for us today. I can feel the prayers, like a warm, soft blanket wrapped around me in the middle of this storm. It comforts me to know that so many people are lifting us up and it amazes me even more to think about those who are doing it silently, the ones we don't even know about.
A common theme lately has been that no matter what, our friends and family know that I will be okay. Michael and I will be okay. We have a strong foundation in our faith and our marriage and come what may, we will be okay. I have never once doubted that no matter the outcome, we will be okay. After all, no one is promised tomorrow. But to be reminded over and over again that come what may, we will be okay has been extremely comforting. Kind of like once you repeat something over and over again, it starts to become true? :)
So shameless plug here- KEEP PRAYING. Keep sending good thoughts, good vibes, excellent ju-ju, what have you. I am humbled by the lack of faith that I've shown and the people who have picked up the slack for me. We probably won't have any news until at least Monday night, but if we do, I will update.
Thanks for making me feel that I'm not alone.
Wednesday, February 8, 2012
The long wait.
So we've been back from Key West since early Monday morning and I have tried to write on here about 10 times so far. Each time, the words and thoughts that are swirling around in my head are just too much and I normally just close out the window. I am still here though, and in serious need of some sort of release.
It was a great trip. The weather was beautiful, the food was great, our B&B was goregous. It was nice to have some time to spend with M one on one, since our jobs and the pregnancy doesn't leave us much time to just "be".
I realized on this trip that one of my worst flaws may be the fact that I cannot simply relax and "do nothing". I always feel like I'm missing something. Of the 5 days that we were in Key West, we pretty much did everything touristy there was to do, visited the beach, had a massage.. etc. At 6 months pregnant, I never once stopped to take a nap. I finished a book between the airport and waiting for M to finish getting ready one morning. I think part of my problem is that when I'm not busy, I think... and thinking lately has been really, really tough on me.
I thought getting away would be the cure-all for the anxiety I am feeling over Friday's ultrasound. I figured some sunshine, fresh seafood and the sea would the cure for all that ails me. And to be perfectly honest- I am just exhausted this week. The only time I could find to worry last week was late at night, long after M's breathing got shallow. I blamed it on being 6 months pregnant and in a new environment, but with every kick (Bertha's getting so strong.. I'd hate to feel her jabs if I didn't have my placenta in the front shielding my poor belly!) I just couldn't help but fear the worst. I came home exhausted, even more fearful and just emotionally spent.
I feel very alone. M finally felt her kick last week and while his eyes got really big, he doesn't have the connection I have with her- he doesn't talk about her unless I bring it up first. My Mom is still in her denial phase about all of this, which stings since she basically makes a HUGE deal out of everything (including having to get a tooth pulled today.. you woulda thought somoene was dying..). My Dad, surprisingly, has provided me the most comfort, but I can't talk to him without crying. He told me this morning he'd spent the morning at the chapel praying for us before work again and it rips me apart- I have always felt so strong and secure in my faith and I honestly feel it going right out the window. It's not that I can't fathom that bad things can happen and not that I believe God is punishing me.. it's just I feel so damn disconnected right now and I don't know how to get that peace that everything will work out back. My sister was great the first week or so- texting every day, letting me vent... but she was on vacation with her boyfriend and had the time. Now that she's back to real life with the kiddos, I haven't heard from her. It hurts. The few girlfriends I've told have been great- asking when the scan is and saying comforting things. Key West was the worst. Everywhere we went people smiled at me, told me how great I looked, asked how far along I was. When I told them I was having a girl they all just beamed. It was hard for me to play the part of naive pregnant lady. I figured a 30 second convo probably didn't need me adding in, "But she could die..." but like I said, I just feel so fucking alone all the time.
As goes along with never sitting still, I am a planner. There is a part of me that wants to get through Friday and then to Monday, when we'll hopefully get results. Then hopefully I can breathe a huge sigh of relief, start planning the nursery, registering for showers, giving my sister my shower list, and buying tons of pink clothes because I know my baby is okay. I don't think I'll ever be really sure that things are going to work out, even when she's here, but it will be a huge weight off my shoulders. The other, more cynical part of me, knows that 48 hours from now I might be wishing to live these moments of carefree unknowingness (even ones filled with worry and fear) for ever and ever.
So, I sit and I wait. I work at the office, putting out fires that the re-org has introduced. I find myself laughing with co-workers and playing with Lucy. And then the sick feeling comes back. The nagging feeling that catches in my throat. The one that haunts me when I wake up and when I lay my head down at night and especially when I'm least expecting it. I don't know what to do. This limbo feels like it's taking forever.
We went to the hospital for a tour on Monday night. We saw the nursery. We saw a sweet little baby who was a bit jaundiced under the sun lights. Is it sick that I wish for "just" jaundice? I looked at those little tiny beings, rooting around, looking at their hands, crying for their moms and it hit me that GOOD GOD THIS COULD NOT HAPPEN FOR ME. And I stuffed it down, smiled and cooed like all the other big bellied ladies and wondered when will this end?
Morbid thoughts overtake me all the time. Like... would we bury her or cremate her? While M and I both think we want to be cremated, there's something about having a place to go and visit her that is comforting. Besides, what do you do with baby ashes? Keep them somewhere? What happens after I die? Do they get passed down along the family until someone somewhere decides that they are worthless like Grandma's lamp? This is usually when my mind kicks in, "STOP. SHE IS NOT GOING TO DIE. She is more than likely going to be fine. You will look back on this worry and laugh. You will be exhausted from taking care of an infant, you will be rushing her to daycare in the mornings even later than you already are getting out of the house, you will be pissed that you aren't pumping enough breast milk. Your worries will be whether or not this is PPD, whether her temperature is too high and why in the fuck your families won't go home."
I just can't quiet my mind. The fear is constantly there. I want to pray, to take solace in my faith and it JUST isn't happening right now. It's not that I don't believe. I just can't right now.
49 more hours till the ultrasound... 49 more hours.
It was a great trip. The weather was beautiful, the food was great, our B&B was goregous. It was nice to have some time to spend with M one on one, since our jobs and the pregnancy doesn't leave us much time to just "be".
I realized on this trip that one of my worst flaws may be the fact that I cannot simply relax and "do nothing". I always feel like I'm missing something. Of the 5 days that we were in Key West, we pretty much did everything touristy there was to do, visited the beach, had a massage.. etc. At 6 months pregnant, I never once stopped to take a nap. I finished a book between the airport and waiting for M to finish getting ready one morning. I think part of my problem is that when I'm not busy, I think... and thinking lately has been really, really tough on me.
I thought getting away would be the cure-all for the anxiety I am feeling over Friday's ultrasound. I figured some sunshine, fresh seafood and the sea would the cure for all that ails me. And to be perfectly honest- I am just exhausted this week. The only time I could find to worry last week was late at night, long after M's breathing got shallow. I blamed it on being 6 months pregnant and in a new environment, but with every kick (Bertha's getting so strong.. I'd hate to feel her jabs if I didn't have my placenta in the front shielding my poor belly!) I just couldn't help but fear the worst. I came home exhausted, even more fearful and just emotionally spent.
I feel very alone. M finally felt her kick last week and while his eyes got really big, he doesn't have the connection I have with her- he doesn't talk about her unless I bring it up first. My Mom is still in her denial phase about all of this, which stings since she basically makes a HUGE deal out of everything (including having to get a tooth pulled today.. you woulda thought somoene was dying..). My Dad, surprisingly, has provided me the most comfort, but I can't talk to him without crying. He told me this morning he'd spent the morning at the chapel praying for us before work again and it rips me apart- I have always felt so strong and secure in my faith and I honestly feel it going right out the window. It's not that I can't fathom that bad things can happen and not that I believe God is punishing me.. it's just I feel so damn disconnected right now and I don't know how to get that peace that everything will work out back. My sister was great the first week or so- texting every day, letting me vent... but she was on vacation with her boyfriend and had the time. Now that she's back to real life with the kiddos, I haven't heard from her. It hurts. The few girlfriends I've told have been great- asking when the scan is and saying comforting things. Key West was the worst. Everywhere we went people smiled at me, told me how great I looked, asked how far along I was. When I told them I was having a girl they all just beamed. It was hard for me to play the part of naive pregnant lady. I figured a 30 second convo probably didn't need me adding in, "But she could die..." but like I said, I just feel so fucking alone all the time.
As goes along with never sitting still, I am a planner. There is a part of me that wants to get through Friday and then to Monday, when we'll hopefully get results. Then hopefully I can breathe a huge sigh of relief, start planning the nursery, registering for showers, giving my sister my shower list, and buying tons of pink clothes because I know my baby is okay. I don't think I'll ever be really sure that things are going to work out, even when she's here, but it will be a huge weight off my shoulders. The other, more cynical part of me, knows that 48 hours from now I might be wishing to live these moments of carefree unknowingness (even ones filled with worry and fear) for ever and ever.
So, I sit and I wait. I work at the office, putting out fires that the re-org has introduced. I find myself laughing with co-workers and playing with Lucy. And then the sick feeling comes back. The nagging feeling that catches in my throat. The one that haunts me when I wake up and when I lay my head down at night and especially when I'm least expecting it. I don't know what to do. This limbo feels like it's taking forever.
We went to the hospital for a tour on Monday night. We saw the nursery. We saw a sweet little baby who was a bit jaundiced under the sun lights. Is it sick that I wish for "just" jaundice? I looked at those little tiny beings, rooting around, looking at their hands, crying for their moms and it hit me that GOOD GOD THIS COULD NOT HAPPEN FOR ME. And I stuffed it down, smiled and cooed like all the other big bellied ladies and wondered when will this end?
Morbid thoughts overtake me all the time. Like... would we bury her or cremate her? While M and I both think we want to be cremated, there's something about having a place to go and visit her that is comforting. Besides, what do you do with baby ashes? Keep them somewhere? What happens after I die? Do they get passed down along the family until someone somewhere decides that they are worthless like Grandma's lamp? This is usually when my mind kicks in, "STOP. SHE IS NOT GOING TO DIE. She is more than likely going to be fine. You will look back on this worry and laugh. You will be exhausted from taking care of an infant, you will be rushing her to daycare in the mornings even later than you already are getting out of the house, you will be pissed that you aren't pumping enough breast milk. Your worries will be whether or not this is PPD, whether her temperature is too high and why in the fuck your families won't go home."
I just can't quiet my mind. The fear is constantly there. I want to pray, to take solace in my faith and it JUST isn't happening right now. It's not that I don't believe. I just can't right now.
49 more hours till the ultrasound... 49 more hours.
Monday, January 30, 2012
Weekend.
So, what I didn't mention in my last post is that I'm sick... again.
It's true that your immune system pretty much shits the bed when you get pregnant- and for good reason. If it didn't lower its resistance, then it would treat your little bean as a foreign body and try to get rid of it. The unforunate part being that I am a sickie by nature and therefore if someone sneezes within 30349 feet of me, I'm sick.
I've had this respiratory thing THREE times since June. In June, it got so bad that they thought I had whooping cough (seriously, don't laugh.. it was awful) and it took me almost 6 weeks to get better. I got it again in November at about 11 weeks pregnant and have it again now. The really great part about being sick and pregnant? The meds... saline spray, tylenol and cough drops. I've literally had dreams about Nyquil for weeks on end...
My usual MO is to wait about 10 days after I get sick and then head in to see the doctor. I feel like if you haven't been sick for long enough, they tend to make you wait it out with the old "it's a virus" thing and being in a waiting room with other sick people means that by the time I go back a week or two later, I'm REALLY sick. Not this time, though. I woke up on Monday feeling a little congested in my chest and by Thursday, I knew it meant business. Not to mention that we've got our big vacay coming up on Wednesday and come hell or high water, I'm going to be in Key West. So Friday morning, I e-mailed my boss, told her I was sick (I swear she must think that I'm a closet pregnancy pack-a-day smoker) and magically got an appointment that morning with my GP (it is amazing what perks there are being pregnant.. ha ha). Sure enough, I'm wheezing and there isn't a whole hell of a lot to do about it. Well, we can do something about it, but all the drugs are class C, meaning that not enough pregnant with a cough wanted to try out steroids in a clinical trial on their kid while they were pregnant so the safety of the drug for the baby is in question. (Strangely enough, penicillin is perfectly safe during pregnancy and they know this because they had to do studies on pregnant women during syphillis outbreaks... uhh, thanks for the trivia, doc..) It's probably wise to note here that I was an ashmatic as a child and so yes, anytime anything gets into my chest it normally requires antibiotics, nebulizer treatments around the clock and a lovely 14 day course of prednisone in order to get my inflamation under control. Anyway, the good old GP decides that since I'm far enough along, we should probably go ahead with the usual course of action and I, of course, freak out.
I get in touch with my super perinatalogist (who I haven't even met yet) on his take on the meds. He basically says that little Bertha is already formed and I'm not doing her much good if I can't breathe, now am I? He even chuckles about the prednisone (which the GP has reduced to a 5 day course) and says that "hey, you're close to viability anyway, so if something happened and you went into labor, she'd have an even better shot because her lungs are getting matured as we speak..." Umm. Thanks?!
Needless to say, I was told to spend the weekend in bed. And I pretty much did. Which left me a lot of time to think. Which is not good. Not to mention that prednisone makes me pretty much act like a crack head. Trying to stay in bed or on the couch while thinking about the million things I should be doing or the fact that I may or may not be bringing home a baby from the hosptial makes me a little bit.. oh, cranky. Weepy. PSYCHO. Seriously, the last time I was on prednisone, I remember being awake at 3AM making an apple crisp and cleaning the little crevices in my kitchen cabinets with a TOOTHBRUSH.
This possibly having a catastrophically ill kid thing is not going so well for me. Like most people, I do well when I'm busy- it's the late nights and quiet times (the shower always gets me) where I start to imagine the worst and start to fall apart. I was happy to get back to work today.
Except that by missing Friday, I missed the fact that someone high up got promoted to even higher up and there was a massive re-org in my branch that basically has completely and totally bummed me the heck out. While my boss is still my boss (Can we get a THANK GOD?), she will be filling in for the guy who got promoted until they can post his old position and get someone new in. I work for the Federal Government, so basically, I don't plan on seeing her until I get back from maternity leave in September. One of her minions is stepping up into her place for the time being, so he will essentially be my boss. Nice guy, but I get the feeling that he doesn't like me. I can't place it and it may just be the way he is, but I am not looking forward to working the next 3 months without my awesome boss around. AND, the higher up who got promoted is taking his right-hand woman, who I've been very close to and has basically been mentoring me in all ways to move up in the government world. So, to say I'm bummed is pretty much putting it lightly.
I don't know how many times in my life I've uttered the phrase, "I really need a vacation..." but I'm sure it's more than I'm entitled to. I've never actually meant it more than I do right now.
And there are a lot of things in life to bitch about obviously- and I have two major worries clearly- my sweet girl and what's going to happen long-term with my job, but damn- can't someone make a maternity bathing suit that doesn't make me look like I'm going to water aerobics with Grandma?! :)
It's true that your immune system pretty much shits the bed when you get pregnant- and for good reason. If it didn't lower its resistance, then it would treat your little bean as a foreign body and try to get rid of it. The unforunate part being that I am a sickie by nature and therefore if someone sneezes within 30349 feet of me, I'm sick.
I've had this respiratory thing THREE times since June. In June, it got so bad that they thought I had whooping cough (seriously, don't laugh.. it was awful) and it took me almost 6 weeks to get better. I got it again in November at about 11 weeks pregnant and have it again now. The really great part about being sick and pregnant? The meds... saline spray, tylenol and cough drops. I've literally had dreams about Nyquil for weeks on end...
My usual MO is to wait about 10 days after I get sick and then head in to see the doctor. I feel like if you haven't been sick for long enough, they tend to make you wait it out with the old "it's a virus" thing and being in a waiting room with other sick people means that by the time I go back a week or two later, I'm REALLY sick. Not this time, though. I woke up on Monday feeling a little congested in my chest and by Thursday, I knew it meant business. Not to mention that we've got our big vacay coming up on Wednesday and come hell or high water, I'm going to be in Key West. So Friday morning, I e-mailed my boss, told her I was sick (I swear she must think that I'm a closet pregnancy pack-a-day smoker) and magically got an appointment that morning with my GP (it is amazing what perks there are being pregnant.. ha ha). Sure enough, I'm wheezing and there isn't a whole hell of a lot to do about it. Well, we can do something about it, but all the drugs are class C, meaning that not enough pregnant with a cough wanted to try out steroids in a clinical trial on their kid while they were pregnant so the safety of the drug for the baby is in question. (Strangely enough, penicillin is perfectly safe during pregnancy and they know this because they had to do studies on pregnant women during syphillis outbreaks... uhh, thanks for the trivia, doc..) It's probably wise to note here that I was an ashmatic as a child and so yes, anytime anything gets into my chest it normally requires antibiotics, nebulizer treatments around the clock and a lovely 14 day course of prednisone in order to get my inflamation under control. Anyway, the good old GP decides that since I'm far enough along, we should probably go ahead with the usual course of action and I, of course, freak out.
I get in touch with my super perinatalogist (who I haven't even met yet) on his take on the meds. He basically says that little Bertha is already formed and I'm not doing her much good if I can't breathe, now am I? He even chuckles about the prednisone (which the GP has reduced to a 5 day course) and says that "hey, you're close to viability anyway, so if something happened and you went into labor, she'd have an even better shot because her lungs are getting matured as we speak..." Umm. Thanks?!
Needless to say, I was told to spend the weekend in bed. And I pretty much did. Which left me a lot of time to think. Which is not good. Not to mention that prednisone makes me pretty much act like a crack head. Trying to stay in bed or on the couch while thinking about the million things I should be doing or the fact that I may or may not be bringing home a baby from the hosptial makes me a little bit.. oh, cranky. Weepy. PSYCHO. Seriously, the last time I was on prednisone, I remember being awake at 3AM making an apple crisp and cleaning the little crevices in my kitchen cabinets with a TOOTHBRUSH.
This possibly having a catastrophically ill kid thing is not going so well for me. Like most people, I do well when I'm busy- it's the late nights and quiet times (the shower always gets me) where I start to imagine the worst and start to fall apart. I was happy to get back to work today.
Except that by missing Friday, I missed the fact that someone high up got promoted to even higher up and there was a massive re-org in my branch that basically has completely and totally bummed me the heck out. While my boss is still my boss (Can we get a THANK GOD?), she will be filling in for the guy who got promoted until they can post his old position and get someone new in. I work for the Federal Government, so basically, I don't plan on seeing her until I get back from maternity leave in September. One of her minions is stepping up into her place for the time being, so he will essentially be my boss. Nice guy, but I get the feeling that he doesn't like me. I can't place it and it may just be the way he is, but I am not looking forward to working the next 3 months without my awesome boss around. AND, the higher up who got promoted is taking his right-hand woman, who I've been very close to and has basically been mentoring me in all ways to move up in the government world. So, to say I'm bummed is pretty much putting it lightly.
I don't know how many times in my life I've uttered the phrase, "I really need a vacation..." but I'm sure it's more than I'm entitled to. I've never actually meant it more than I do right now.
And there are a lot of things in life to bitch about obviously- and I have two major worries clearly- my sweet girl and what's going to happen long-term with my job, but damn- can't someone make a maternity bathing suit that doesn't make me look like I'm going to water aerobics with Grandma?! :)
Thursday, January 26, 2012
News.
So, basically, I've avoided posting on here for a while because I just couldn't bring myself to write about what's been going on. But I feel like at some point, I will need to look back on this and remember how horribly awful it was and hopefully see that everything turned out a-ok.
Last Thursday, M & I went in for our mid-pregnancy ultrasound. As a disclaimer, we didn't do any first trimester screening. This was for a few reasons. First of all, I'm not all pro-life or anything, but for the two of us, we don't view termination as an option. Second, the false positive rate for things like Down's and nerual tube defects are sky high and the only way to know for sure after getting results like that is to have an amnio. Amnio= risk of miscarriage, so we figured we'd wait until our mid-pregnancy ultrasound and sort anything out then. We spent about an hour in the ultrasound on Thursday and saw her kicking away, sucking her thumb and the tech printed us out a bunch of strips of adorable baby feet and profile photos. She asked us to wait while she showed the radiologist, and then a few minutes later dismissed us.
We had a doctor's appointment right after the ultrasound and the doctor asked how it went. We said we didn't have any indication either way, and she said that if the radiologist didn't ask to speak with us that we were probably in the clear.
We weren't. I got the phone call Monday morning while my doctor was at the hospital performing a C-section. I just missed her call informing me there are some abnormalities she'd like to discuss. Waiting for her to call back was an eternity. You know, that pit in your stomach.
2 hours later, she revealed that there are two possible problems with our sweetie. First, they couldn't see the right ventricle in her heart. Second, there was a bright spot near her stomach that was abnormal. Her initial take was: the baby was in a bad spot and her ventricle couldn't be seen and that will change with a repeat U/S. The spot on the stomach could be an artifact of the machine, it could be something that goes away, it could be something like a mild hernia.
Then came the sucker punch: or... it could be markers of a trisomy... Down's, or worse- a lethal defect. We won't know until we do another scan, but we need to wait for her to get bigger... about a month. There was no way to process this information. I hung up the phone, called M, cried my eyes out in the work bathroom and somehow got through the day. I spent all of Monday night sobbing- you know the kind, 8 hours straight and can hardly open the little slits your eyes have become.
Tuesday I started becoming my own Dr. Google. This is NOT a recommended course of action because basically everything that goes wrong is written about by someone on the internet. I came up with a list of questions and e-mailed my doctor (our lovely HMO doesn't have phone numbers direct into offices). She told me again that I'd have to wait for my ultrasound.
Yesterday, I got pissed. Like, mama bear wants to know why the hell you are not listening to me. So, I got back on the email with her and she finally called. She referred us to an excellent perinatologist who looked at my scans. He agreed that we need to wait for her to get bigger to see everything better but allowed us to move the scans up to February 10th. In his experience, this could be nothing more than a (literal) blip on the ultrasound that resolves itself by then. It could be a trisomy, something he couldn't discount, but said that he was leaning towards her being chromosonally normal. His thoughts were that if the heart continued to be an issue, it was probably NOT a missing ventricle, but instead a tiny one that would require surgical intervention at birth. The spot in her tummy? It could be a bowel blockage, a hernia, something that would be a pretty easy fix. He seems to think that at least one of the problems will have resolved itself on our next scan and doesn't believe that they are connected.
The game plan is now for a duplicate ultrasound... depending on the results (which will be read by a radiologist, my OB and the high-risk doc) will show our next steps. If everything is fine, I will continue on with my regular OB. If there are issues, I will immediately be transferred to the perinatologist at Children's Hospital here in town and they will monitor me in every way possible. The cardio-thoracic surgeon at Children's is one of the best on the East Coast.
It's a waiting game. God forbid it's a trisomy- there's nothing we would do differently except carry her to term and love her for as long as she's with us. If it's a hernia or bowel issue or a heart issue, they wouldn't do corrective surgery until she's born. I get that. But the fear of the unknown is killing me.
I'm glad I waited to blog until I could get my thoughts straightened out a bit. I am VERY lucky to have a friend who went through an incredibly difficult pregnancy and ended up with a son who needs extra help. She subsequently had a healthy second pregnancy and has been able to shed SO MUCH light on things for me. The last 72 hours have been a bit of a blur and I'm still not there.
So, prayers/good thoughts/candles lit/rain dances... whatever floats your boat for happy, positive thoughts for our little girl are appreciated. Our long-weekend getaway to Key West next week is probably more needed that any vacation we've ever been on and I look forward to sticking my toes in the sand, drinking a virgin daquiri and catching some rays.
Hopefully happier news will be just around the bend.
Last Thursday, M & I went in for our mid-pregnancy ultrasound. As a disclaimer, we didn't do any first trimester screening. This was for a few reasons. First of all, I'm not all pro-life or anything, but for the two of us, we don't view termination as an option. Second, the false positive rate for things like Down's and nerual tube defects are sky high and the only way to know for sure after getting results like that is to have an amnio. Amnio= risk of miscarriage, so we figured we'd wait until our mid-pregnancy ultrasound and sort anything out then. We spent about an hour in the ultrasound on Thursday and saw her kicking away, sucking her thumb and the tech printed us out a bunch of strips of adorable baby feet and profile photos. She asked us to wait while she showed the radiologist, and then a few minutes later dismissed us.
We had a doctor's appointment right after the ultrasound and the doctor asked how it went. We said we didn't have any indication either way, and she said that if the radiologist didn't ask to speak with us that we were probably in the clear.
We weren't. I got the phone call Monday morning while my doctor was at the hospital performing a C-section. I just missed her call informing me there are some abnormalities she'd like to discuss. Waiting for her to call back was an eternity. You know, that pit in your stomach.
2 hours later, she revealed that there are two possible problems with our sweetie. First, they couldn't see the right ventricle in her heart. Second, there was a bright spot near her stomach that was abnormal. Her initial take was: the baby was in a bad spot and her ventricle couldn't be seen and that will change with a repeat U/S. The spot on the stomach could be an artifact of the machine, it could be something that goes away, it could be something like a mild hernia.
Then came the sucker punch: or... it could be markers of a trisomy... Down's, or worse- a lethal defect. We won't know until we do another scan, but we need to wait for her to get bigger... about a month. There was no way to process this information. I hung up the phone, called M, cried my eyes out in the work bathroom and somehow got through the day. I spent all of Monday night sobbing- you know the kind, 8 hours straight and can hardly open the little slits your eyes have become.
Tuesday I started becoming my own Dr. Google. This is NOT a recommended course of action because basically everything that goes wrong is written about by someone on the internet. I came up with a list of questions and e-mailed my doctor (our lovely HMO doesn't have phone numbers direct into offices). She told me again that I'd have to wait for my ultrasound.
Yesterday, I got pissed. Like, mama bear wants to know why the hell you are not listening to me. So, I got back on the email with her and she finally called. She referred us to an excellent perinatologist who looked at my scans. He agreed that we need to wait for her to get bigger to see everything better but allowed us to move the scans up to February 10th. In his experience, this could be nothing more than a (literal) blip on the ultrasound that resolves itself by then. It could be a trisomy, something he couldn't discount, but said that he was leaning towards her being chromosonally normal. His thoughts were that if the heart continued to be an issue, it was probably NOT a missing ventricle, but instead a tiny one that would require surgical intervention at birth. The spot in her tummy? It could be a bowel blockage, a hernia, something that would be a pretty easy fix. He seems to think that at least one of the problems will have resolved itself on our next scan and doesn't believe that they are connected.
The game plan is now for a duplicate ultrasound... depending on the results (which will be read by a radiologist, my OB and the high-risk doc) will show our next steps. If everything is fine, I will continue on with my regular OB. If there are issues, I will immediately be transferred to the perinatologist at Children's Hospital here in town and they will monitor me in every way possible. The cardio-thoracic surgeon at Children's is one of the best on the East Coast.
It's a waiting game. God forbid it's a trisomy- there's nothing we would do differently except carry her to term and love her for as long as she's with us. If it's a hernia or bowel issue or a heart issue, they wouldn't do corrective surgery until she's born. I get that. But the fear of the unknown is killing me.
I'm glad I waited to blog until I could get my thoughts straightened out a bit. I am VERY lucky to have a friend who went through an incredibly difficult pregnancy and ended up with a son who needs extra help. She subsequently had a healthy second pregnancy and has been able to shed SO MUCH light on things for me. The last 72 hours have been a bit of a blur and I'm still not there.
So, prayers/good thoughts/candles lit/rain dances... whatever floats your boat for happy, positive thoughts for our little girl are appreciated. Our long-weekend getaway to Key West next week is probably more needed that any vacation we've ever been on and I look forward to sticking my toes in the sand, drinking a virgin daquiri and catching some rays.
Hopefully happier news will be just around the bend.
Friday, January 13, 2012
$186 dollar commute
I live in Northern Virginia, RIGHT outside of DC. When the wind is blowing the right direction and the clouds split a certain way, I can see the Washington Monument in all her glory from the end of my block. This is very convenient for commuting purposes. I live about 6 miles from my office.
Normally, M drives me into my office in the city and then heads back out to his office in the burbs. At night, I take the metro (subway) to a stop near his office and we ride home together. This has worked pretty well for us. It's a pain for M in the morning and it's a bit of a pain for me at night (being a Prima Donna who doesn't like to deign to ride with the masses on public transit) but overall, we're saving money because I'm not paying ridiculous rates to park in the city.
There are times, however, when I have to drive myself to and from work. There's a parking garage about 6 blocks from my office that is a STEAL at $13 for the day. This week, I've driven almost every day because my sweet little guy has a huge project going out on Monday and has been working anywhere from 12-16 hours each day.
The commute in during morning rush hour isn't too bad. If I leave my house by 7:25, I can usually be sitting at my desk by 8. That's including the walk from the garage and getting to the 11th floor through security at my Ft. Knox like office.
Driving home is a whole other ballpark. I get off fairly early (4:30ish) but tend to head downstairs to the basement gym and work out before I head home. If I don't do it at lunch or before I leave, it doesn't get done. I'm usually finished and back to my car around 5:30. Traffic sucks at this time. Yesterday, I managed to get in a run during lunch (let me tell you- I am becoming quite the spectacle with my big belly and red face..) and was happy to go home to relatively less traffic. If you're not familiar, DC has horrific traffic ALL. THE. TIME. To ease this congestion, some smarty thought up having a separate three lane highway called HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes. If you can get three people in the car with you, you can take these lanes which has about 20% of the traffic that the main line does. These lanes are restricted to ONLY HOV from 6:30am-9am going north in the morning and 3:30pm-6pm going south in the evening. This can be confusing, since EVERYONE can use the HOV lane going out of the city to ease congestion off the bridge. Once you cross into Virginia and pass the Pentagon, if you are not in a vehicle with at least 3 people, you have to exit into the main lanes of massive traffic.
I happen to live just one itty-bitty exit off the "restricted" access highway. Yesterday afternoon, traffic was completely stopped in the main lanes and I just wanted to get home. So I stayed on the HOV-lane. I've done this approximately 30849 times. I actually don't do this probably more than once a week and I understand the repercussions. If you get off the exit and there's a trooper there... you'll get a ticket. I've passed a few cops before and even gotten lucky once when there was a trooper off the exit and already had someone pulled over and I got away free. I knew eventually my luck would run out. The fine for a first time offense is $50. After that, it goes up exponentially and you start to get points on your record.
So as I'm getting off the very longgggg exit ramp (an even better way to catch you, you can't see them and there's no where else to go) I see the trooper. I think very nasty words in my head and realize that I'm sunk. I briefly consider saying that I'm in labor, but realize my 20 week belly probably isn't going to be very convincing. The fleeting thought of handing him my work ID along with my license and registration crosses my mind, but I'm pretty sure that flaunting my position is probably going to piss this very large man off and besides, the agency I work for kind of frowns upon that sort of thing.
I roll down my window, tell him I'm sorry without any BS excuses, give him my info and wait. Another car is pulled by a separate VERY SCARY trooper and she is giving him a rash of shit. I have to chuckle when I hear him cut her off mid-rant with, "Oh, is that a cracked windshield I see?"
The nice cop gives me back my info and a ticket. Damnit. He says I can call a number and pay it over the phone. I tell him to stay safe and he thanks me for being so polite and obviously calm about this. I think to myself, "It's $50! Sure it's a pain and I shouldn't have done it, but it's no real biggie..."
I call the number when I get home, but of course the Courthouse closes at 4. I just called a few minutes ago (after having to report the incident at work- mucho embarassing) and got a recording. Apparently, the fine has gone up and so has the court costs you have to pay along with it. I now owe the County of Arlington... $186. Coupled with the $40 I spent in gas yesterday morning and the $13 garage fee, I'm thinking I probably should have just stayed home yesterday.
Normally, M drives me into my office in the city and then heads back out to his office in the burbs. At night, I take the metro (subway) to a stop near his office and we ride home together. This has worked pretty well for us. It's a pain for M in the morning and it's a bit of a pain for me at night (being a Prima Donna who doesn't like to deign to ride with the masses on public transit) but overall, we're saving money because I'm not paying ridiculous rates to park in the city.
There are times, however, when I have to drive myself to and from work. There's a parking garage about 6 blocks from my office that is a STEAL at $13 for the day. This week, I've driven almost every day because my sweet little guy has a huge project going out on Monday and has been working anywhere from 12-16 hours each day.
The commute in during morning rush hour isn't too bad. If I leave my house by 7:25, I can usually be sitting at my desk by 8. That's including the walk from the garage and getting to the 11th floor through security at my Ft. Knox like office.
Driving home is a whole other ballpark. I get off fairly early (4:30ish) but tend to head downstairs to the basement gym and work out before I head home. If I don't do it at lunch or before I leave, it doesn't get done. I'm usually finished and back to my car around 5:30. Traffic sucks at this time. Yesterday, I managed to get in a run during lunch (let me tell you- I am becoming quite the spectacle with my big belly and red face..) and was happy to go home to relatively less traffic. If you're not familiar, DC has horrific traffic ALL. THE. TIME. To ease this congestion, some smarty thought up having a separate three lane highway called HOV (High Occupancy Vehicle) lanes. If you can get three people in the car with you, you can take these lanes which has about 20% of the traffic that the main line does. These lanes are restricted to ONLY HOV from 6:30am-9am going north in the morning and 3:30pm-6pm going south in the evening. This can be confusing, since EVERYONE can use the HOV lane going out of the city to ease congestion off the bridge. Once you cross into Virginia and pass the Pentagon, if you are not in a vehicle with at least 3 people, you have to exit into the main lanes of massive traffic.
I happen to live just one itty-bitty exit off the "restricted" access highway. Yesterday afternoon, traffic was completely stopped in the main lanes and I just wanted to get home. So I stayed on the HOV-lane. I've done this approximately 30849 times. I actually don't do this probably more than once a week and I understand the repercussions. If you get off the exit and there's a trooper there... you'll get a ticket. I've passed a few cops before and even gotten lucky once when there was a trooper off the exit and already had someone pulled over and I got away free. I knew eventually my luck would run out. The fine for a first time offense is $50. After that, it goes up exponentially and you start to get points on your record.
So as I'm getting off the very longgggg exit ramp (an even better way to catch you, you can't see them and there's no where else to go) I see the trooper. I think very nasty words in my head and realize that I'm sunk. I briefly consider saying that I'm in labor, but realize my 20 week belly probably isn't going to be very convincing. The fleeting thought of handing him my work ID along with my license and registration crosses my mind, but I'm pretty sure that flaunting my position is probably going to piss this very large man off and besides, the agency I work for kind of frowns upon that sort of thing.
I roll down my window, tell him I'm sorry without any BS excuses, give him my info and wait. Another car is pulled by a separate VERY SCARY trooper and she is giving him a rash of shit. I have to chuckle when I hear him cut her off mid-rant with, "Oh, is that a cracked windshield I see?"
The nice cop gives me back my info and a ticket. Damnit. He says I can call a number and pay it over the phone. I tell him to stay safe and he thanks me for being so polite and obviously calm about this. I think to myself, "It's $50! Sure it's a pain and I shouldn't have done it, but it's no real biggie..."
I call the number when I get home, but of course the Courthouse closes at 4. I just called a few minutes ago (after having to report the incident at work- mucho embarassing) and got a recording. Apparently, the fine has gone up and so has the court costs you have to pay along with it. I now owe the County of Arlington... $186. Coupled with the $40 I spent in gas yesterday morning and the $13 garage fee, I'm thinking I probably should have just stayed home yesterday.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Reasons not to coupon...
Growing up, my parents were definitely on opposite ends of the spectrum with a lot of things. When I asked my Dad about going to the movies/ice skating/driving aimlessly around town, I always got the, "Go ask your Mother". In my house, as long as Mama was happy, things were okay. Except for the fact that the biggest thing my parents disagreed on was money. Ahh, the familiar money talk. We've all been there.
In my family, my Dad worked hard (read: long hours, lots of overtime, weekend work as well) as a foreman at an Eletrical Company. My dad is super-duper smart, but went to college for a couple of semesters and decided he'd rather work with his hands. My parents were married super young, didn't have a pot to pee in and had my sister right away (I've done the math, she's legit). By the time I came along, my parents bought their first house and were doing okay. Except for my Mom's nasty habit- spending. Seriously, my Mom spends money like it's going out of style. She was a mostly stay-at-home Mom, teaching dance a few nights a week interspersed with some aerobics instructing. She made enough money for some "blow me" cash and had that been it, all would have been well. Except that she had a penchant for the "checkbook" (which seems so comical to me now..) and well, 90% of the fights in my house growing up were because she spent too much money.
I will readily admit that my Dad is a bit "frugal". Don't get me wrong- if my sister or I needed bailing out- no problem. A family at our church couldn't keep the heat on during the winter? My Dad wordlessly slipped them a check after service. My Dad has been more generous on the QT that I'm sure I can even imagine. That being said, does not mean that he didn't drive to THREE grocery stores each week because there was TP on sale at one store, steak at another and diet pepsi at a third.
I think I ended up somewhere in the middle of the spectrum in regards to finance. Clearly, I'm not driving across town to get a better deal on diet pepsi (however, I won't buy if it's not on sale) but I'm also not throwing hard earned money away on a bunch of crap at TJ Maxx that I'll wear once. I do have a real love of Tory Burch shoes and today I am wearing them along with my $60 Liz Lange maternity outfit from Target.
One thing my dad did teach me was that credit card debt = bad. Credit card delinquency= really bad. He bailed me out a few times post college and while that didn't mean I still didn't blow my weekly check from that god awful engineering firm, I just was doing it directly out of my checking account and when it was gone, it was gone. Thank you, Dad.
When I met M, we lived pretty lavishly. After all, he was a single guy who had spent a year overseas as a government contractor in a pretty volitaile country. Hazard pay, anyone? There wasn't much we thought about in regards to spending. We figured that exorbinant amount of money would *cough* last us forever. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. So we ate out. We had an amazing million course meal at the Inn at Little Washington, meeting Chef O'Connell afterwards. We shopped. I bought Louboutin shoes. We tripped. Nothing like a little around the world jaunt to London and then diving in the Maldives. Sure, we weren't flying first class or staying at the Ritz, but life was pretty damn good.
Then we got engaged. I have a lovely, lovely diamond. And then we decided to have a New Year's Eve Wedding. In a market like DC. My Dad wrote us a generous check that covered about.. oh.. 20% of the wedding? In a nutshell, by the time we had our crazy wedding.. in DC.. on New Year's... with transportation for all of our guests... and the neatest martini bar you've ever seen.. and fireworks... we were, uh, broke.
Gone was the ING account with all those digits. We had some *cough five digit* credit card debt. We had a bit of a come to Jesus moment. We both have good, stable, well-paying jobs. But we also live a stone's throw from the city in a 100 year old house with a real backyard. We have a mortgage the size of a small country's GDP. The beginning was tough. Like, really, really tough. Like, why is he screaming at me because I bought a new pair of Tory Burches? I realized quickly that I didn't want to end up like my sister- hiding her purchases from her then-husband by using three different credit cards in addition to some cash she'd squirrled away for one transaction at TJ Maxx. I got on board. It was tough. Our eating out became a once or twice a month thing at a bar we loved down the street from our house. Happy hours were now on our back deck. I resigned myself to the fact that I'd be driving my 2005 VW bug for quite a while. I rediscovered a new wardrobe in my closet.
It sucked, kinda, but once we got used to it, it wasn't so bad. We managed in a year to pay off the credit card debt. While it would have been impossible to do just on our paychecks alone, we found out that you can take a loan against your 401K and pay YOURSELF back the interest at a much lower rate (typically 4.5%) instead of paying the credit card company 20% APR and a piece of your soul. We still have to be super careful. Of course, then I got knocked up and you start looking at DC daycare costs and realize we are going to have to be a LOT more careful.
I did take away from my Dad the love of planning out grocery shopping trips. We really only patronize one store (because every dollar you spend translates into a certain discount on gas) and just don't buy things that aren't on sale that week. I do look through the coupons and if we use something, I clip it. Even better if that item is on sale AND I have a coupon. Better in my pocket than the store's, right?
Sunday night, we made a mad dash to the store to stock up for the week. (We bring our lunches to work at least four days each week) We've started doing a lot of cooking on Sundays so that we have things for lunches and quick dinners- since I am a cranky, hungry pregnant woman who does not need dinner to take 3 hours to be cooked when I get home. I had some coupons for some new items and since the coupons were less than a dollar, they would be doubled. I noticed the fiber one brownies were on sale for $2.50. With my .75 coupon that would be double, I'd be getting those suckers for $1.00. I figured they'd be a good snack... and what pregnant lady couldn't use a little more fiber in her diet?
My Mom and sister have a severe reaction to fiber one granola bars. Like, they shit just looking at them. I've never had that problem and couldn't relate. Until I ate a brownie with lunch. The thing is TINY. I mean, really, really little. It was a little chalky, but I'm pretty versed in the world of diet food and thought it was an acceptable treat.
Fast foward an hour. I suddenly REALLY needed to go to the bathroom. I have a serious thing against doing this at work.. I can count the number of times that I've you-know-number-twoed at work on one hand. I basically have to be crapping myself. This, my friends, was one of those times.
No real biggie- I've spent the majority of my pregnancy having the opposite problem so I roll with it. Feeling okay. I head down to the gym after work and during my time in spin class, I have the worst trapped gas pains. I just want to clarify trapped gas pain- like.. from the bottom of my belly all the way up to my throat. Intense pain. Squeezing. Can't take a deep breath. If this was the first time this had happened to me, I'd probably be panicked and think I was in labor. But I've been cursed with this situation many times in my life before and manage to survive the class. The drive home is brutal. I manage to lay on my stomach in a hot (warm, in case my OB is reading) bath and still no relief. I decide to take a half a unisom (completely safe in pregnancy and actually used for morning sickness) and knock myself out to get some relief. I text message M (who always works late on Tuesdays) and say, "Did a little research. Fiber one brownies are notorious for debilitating stomach pains. I'm not sure Bertha and I are going to make it. I apologize in advance for farting on you in my sleep tonight".
According to M, I do not fart in my sleep. Which makes perfect sense because wouldn't ya know? I wake up with the SAME DAMN PAINS this morning.
They are beginning to subside. I double checked with my doctor because I am a good little patient and have pledged to stop being a Google Dr. She laughs at me and asks what I ate yesterday. She stops me after whole-grain high fiber tortilla, grapes, apple and fiber one brownie. She laughs even harder. She said basically that I ate a week's worth of fiber in a matter of hours and she's surprised I can walk and talk.
Moral of this story: Don't buy something just because it's on sale and you have a coupon. The results can be really shitty. :)
In my family, my Dad worked hard (read: long hours, lots of overtime, weekend work as well) as a foreman at an Eletrical Company. My dad is super-duper smart, but went to college for a couple of semesters and decided he'd rather work with his hands. My parents were married super young, didn't have a pot to pee in and had my sister right away (I've done the math, she's legit). By the time I came along, my parents bought their first house and were doing okay. Except for my Mom's nasty habit- spending. Seriously, my Mom spends money like it's going out of style. She was a mostly stay-at-home Mom, teaching dance a few nights a week interspersed with some aerobics instructing. She made enough money for some "blow me" cash and had that been it, all would have been well. Except that she had a penchant for the "checkbook" (which seems so comical to me now..) and well, 90% of the fights in my house growing up were because she spent too much money.
I will readily admit that my Dad is a bit "frugal". Don't get me wrong- if my sister or I needed bailing out- no problem. A family at our church couldn't keep the heat on during the winter? My Dad wordlessly slipped them a check after service. My Dad has been more generous on the QT that I'm sure I can even imagine. That being said, does not mean that he didn't drive to THREE grocery stores each week because there was TP on sale at one store, steak at another and diet pepsi at a third.
I think I ended up somewhere in the middle of the spectrum in regards to finance. Clearly, I'm not driving across town to get a better deal on diet pepsi (however, I won't buy if it's not on sale) but I'm also not throwing hard earned money away on a bunch of crap at TJ Maxx that I'll wear once. I do have a real love of Tory Burch shoes and today I am wearing them along with my $60 Liz Lange maternity outfit from Target.
One thing my dad did teach me was that credit card debt = bad. Credit card delinquency= really bad. He bailed me out a few times post college and while that didn't mean I still didn't blow my weekly check from that god awful engineering firm, I just was doing it directly out of my checking account and when it was gone, it was gone. Thank you, Dad.
When I met M, we lived pretty lavishly. After all, he was a single guy who had spent a year overseas as a government contractor in a pretty volitaile country. Hazard pay, anyone? There wasn't much we thought about in regards to spending. We figured that exorbinant amount of money would *cough* last us forever. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. So we ate out. We had an amazing million course meal at the Inn at Little Washington, meeting Chef O'Connell afterwards. We shopped. I bought Louboutin shoes. We tripped. Nothing like a little around the world jaunt to London and then diving in the Maldives. Sure, we weren't flying first class or staying at the Ritz, but life was pretty damn good.
Then we got engaged. I have a lovely, lovely diamond. And then we decided to have a New Year's Eve Wedding. In a market like DC. My Dad wrote us a generous check that covered about.. oh.. 20% of the wedding? In a nutshell, by the time we had our crazy wedding.. in DC.. on New Year's... with transportation for all of our guests... and the neatest martini bar you've ever seen.. and fireworks... we were, uh, broke.
Gone was the ING account with all those digits. We had some *cough five digit* credit card debt. We had a bit of a come to Jesus moment. We both have good, stable, well-paying jobs. But we also live a stone's throw from the city in a 100 year old house with a real backyard. We have a mortgage the size of a small country's GDP. The beginning was tough. Like, really, really tough. Like, why is he screaming at me because I bought a new pair of Tory Burches? I realized quickly that I didn't want to end up like my sister- hiding her purchases from her then-husband by using three different credit cards in addition to some cash she'd squirrled away for one transaction at TJ Maxx. I got on board. It was tough. Our eating out became a once or twice a month thing at a bar we loved down the street from our house. Happy hours were now on our back deck. I resigned myself to the fact that I'd be driving my 2005 VW bug for quite a while. I rediscovered a new wardrobe in my closet.
It sucked, kinda, but once we got used to it, it wasn't so bad. We managed in a year to pay off the credit card debt. While it would have been impossible to do just on our paychecks alone, we found out that you can take a loan against your 401K and pay YOURSELF back the interest at a much lower rate (typically 4.5%) instead of paying the credit card company 20% APR and a piece of your soul. We still have to be super careful. Of course, then I got knocked up and you start looking at DC daycare costs and realize we are going to have to be a LOT more careful.
I did take away from my Dad the love of planning out grocery shopping trips. We really only patronize one store (because every dollar you spend translates into a certain discount on gas) and just don't buy things that aren't on sale that week. I do look through the coupons and if we use something, I clip it. Even better if that item is on sale AND I have a coupon. Better in my pocket than the store's, right?
Sunday night, we made a mad dash to the store to stock up for the week. (We bring our lunches to work at least four days each week) We've started doing a lot of cooking on Sundays so that we have things for lunches and quick dinners- since I am a cranky, hungry pregnant woman who does not need dinner to take 3 hours to be cooked when I get home. I had some coupons for some new items and since the coupons were less than a dollar, they would be doubled. I noticed the fiber one brownies were on sale for $2.50. With my .75 coupon that would be double, I'd be getting those suckers for $1.00. I figured they'd be a good snack... and what pregnant lady couldn't use a little more fiber in her diet?
My Mom and sister have a severe reaction to fiber one granola bars. Like, they shit just looking at them. I've never had that problem and couldn't relate. Until I ate a brownie with lunch. The thing is TINY. I mean, really, really little. It was a little chalky, but I'm pretty versed in the world of diet food and thought it was an acceptable treat.
Fast foward an hour. I suddenly REALLY needed to go to the bathroom. I have a serious thing against doing this at work.. I can count the number of times that I've you-know-number-twoed at work on one hand. I basically have to be crapping myself. This, my friends, was one of those times.
No real biggie- I've spent the majority of my pregnancy having the opposite problem so I roll with it. Feeling okay. I head down to the gym after work and during my time in spin class, I have the worst trapped gas pains. I just want to clarify trapped gas pain- like.. from the bottom of my belly all the way up to my throat. Intense pain. Squeezing. Can't take a deep breath. If this was the first time this had happened to me, I'd probably be panicked and think I was in labor. But I've been cursed with this situation many times in my life before and manage to survive the class. The drive home is brutal. I manage to lay on my stomach in a hot (warm, in case my OB is reading) bath and still no relief. I decide to take a half a unisom (completely safe in pregnancy and actually used for morning sickness) and knock myself out to get some relief. I text message M (who always works late on Tuesdays) and say, "Did a little research. Fiber one brownies are notorious for debilitating stomach pains. I'm not sure Bertha and I are going to make it. I apologize in advance for farting on you in my sleep tonight".
According to M, I do not fart in my sleep. Which makes perfect sense because wouldn't ya know? I wake up with the SAME DAMN PAINS this morning.
They are beginning to subside. I double checked with my doctor because I am a good little patient and have pledged to stop being a Google Dr. She laughs at me and asks what I ate yesterday. She stops me after whole-grain high fiber tortilla, grapes, apple and fiber one brownie. She laughs even harder. She said basically that I ate a week's worth of fiber in a matter of hours and she's surprised I can walk and talk.
Moral of this story: Don't buy something just because it's on sale and you have a coupon. The results can be really shitty. :)
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
The story of us...
I grew up in the Washington, DC suburbs. I went to college at a small, liberal arts school in NC. I used to say that no one would have ever heard of it, but after the millions and trillions of dollar expansions that have been done, I see kids around here rocking their purple sweatshirts all the time. Let's just say it was not quite the same country club while I was there. College was fabulous. I was in a sorority (aka- drinking club) and somehow managed to keep up with my studies. I really enjoyed interning at a radio station and working at a coffee shop. I had a few serious boyfriends- one freshman/sophomore year who was just a good egg. Nice boy, nice family, just didn't work out (mostly my fault). Junior year is a bit of a haze. I lived in a 3 bedroom apartment with 5 of the wildest sorority sisters known to man. Actually, make that 4. One was a total bump on a log and the "voice of reason", but we managed to drown her out the majority of the time. That year there were no "good egg" boys. Mostly just cases of history repeating itself and not in a good way. Senior year I met a total loser. And I mean that in a nice way. Just a good old dumb Southerner. (No offense, y'all :) Came from nothing, pulled himself up by his bootstraps and thought he was much smarter/popular/good looking/funny/adept at all things naked than he really was. It was a relationship fraught with arguing, drama and I'm pretty sure we broke up at least once a week for over a year. You know the kind- you didn't answer your phone, so he calls your friend, figures out what bar you are at, storms in, sees you talking to another guy from one of your classes, threatens to beat him up, storms out, and you all break up for the 2838th time - ON VALENTINE'S DAY. And you get back together because he cries and calls you "baby doll" in such a pitiful southern accent that you can't be bothered with seeing the light. I could go on and on about this relationship as I suppose it was a defining one. The sad part? I just wished I'd never let go of that good egg from before. We dated until on and off until about 6 months post graduation- even at one point living together in a one bedroom apartment. It is fitting that the very last straw was on a Valentine's Day. I saw the light, moved back to VA- he latched on to a girl who he thought could pull him up from his humble beginnings and I saw some very lovely wedding pictures of the two of them- well, make that the three of them (It doesn't matter how flattering your wedding dress is when you are nearly 5 months preggers).
So, what in the world does any of that have to do with the story of us? Well, believe me.. if I hadn't dated a boy who used hand lotion on his "white boy fro" in lieu of hair gel (true story), I never would have realized how incredibly lucky I am to have ended up with a man like M.
So, after I moved back home to VA, I finagled a job at the company where my Dad worked. I got a job in marketing in the engineering department and was pretty much miserable from day 1. My boss was an angry man who thought nothing of screwing people over for fun. It was a horrific commute and at the end of that commute each day I found myself living back in my childhood bedroom at my parents house. Granted, I was only 22 at the time, so it wasn't like it was too out of the ordinary, but let's just say that was a phase I'd rather forget. Bright spot at the office? Working at an electrical/engineering company, there were only 3 single girls in their 20s in the office. One was the VP's daughter so that was a no-no, the other was a little nerdy and that left me. While I readily admit that I am no Heidi Klum- and I was carrying at least an extra 15 pounds of college kegger/bad breakup weight AND I for whatever stupid reason decided to chop my beautiful long blonde locks into an unforgiving bob- I was the only 20 something in an office of dudes. And they loved me. The accounting guy was delicious in a way that only people with perfect teeth and negligable IQs are. We went to football games, drank a lot of beer, made out a lot and things fizzled out after one monday football game where he got drunk, made an ass of himself, nearly got murdered by blood-thirsty Pittsburgh fans and I had to drive home. Then there was the Business Development guy. A perfect waste of time. I really went through a phase where I went after guys who thought they were much studlier than they really were. I suppose we will be nice and call them "confident". Anyhoo, this guy was a loser on par with the hand lotion guy. It gave me something to do besides facebook all day at work, so he served his purpose.
Now on to my dashing DH. He, too, worked at this life draining pit of a company and he was ACTUALLY an engineer. Pretty wild. When I first began my work there, he was overseas on a contract with the company. We exchanged a few e-mails, none of them pleasant- he didn't get along with one of the higher ups and felt no issue with making that clear to me. I had to send him a few things and got a load of his birthdate- 8/10/71 and knew that even when he returned in a few months time, he was unlikely to be my next flavor of the month. He was *gasp* 14 years older than me.
Fast forward a few months. Still stringing along the dopey BD guy since there really wasn't much else going on. M arrives into the office and I feel... nothing. He is pleasant enough, but I am quick to let the others know that he is under no circumstances to be invited to "lunch bunch". I remember his snarky e-mails and am pleasant but cool.
Time marches on. M manages to ingrain his way into our lunch bunch (I mean, it was a bunch of 40 year old engineers talking shop in a basement cafeteria, so no real feat there...) and I find myself occasionally laughing at his poorly timed and ill-told jokes. I find that he is warm and engaging and hates my boss just as much as I do. But still... he kind of looks like Scott Hamilton. You know, the ice skater. Hmm.
One day there is a fire drill in our building. I am nursing an intense hangover and M picks up on this. During the fire drill, he drives me around the corner to CVS for some emetrol to help my stomach. "He's nice", I think. We become friends. After one particularly bad day at the office, he takes me out for French food. We drink expensive wine and talk about our childhoods and laugh a lot. I remember thinking that's how all dates should be- but hey, this wasn't a date. Remember? He's technically old enough to be my father. He looks like Scott Hamilton. Must be the wine.
We really develop a friendship after that. We text during meetings about what douches we work with, join in on work happy hours and I take him to the airport when he gets sent back overseas for a few weeks. Once he's home, he gets a belated birthday gift from our company- a dinner giftcard and a movie certificate. I am standing near him and joke, "When are you taking me out?" (I have recently started dating the hot accounting guy again... a glutton for cuteness, you could say) He mumbles and stutters and we agree to go out later that week.
We hit the restaurant. It's lovely. He orders a Key Lime Pie Martini. Ahh, it all makes sense why we get along so well- he's GAY! But wait, wasn't he married before? We see "Burn After Reading" which is a strange movie- especially when George Clooney fashions some sort of dildo horse... kind of awkward when you could be on a date, but it's not a date with a friend who may or may not be gay. Hmm. After dinner, M takes me out for drinks. We laugh. A lot.
I get home (thankfully at this point I have seen the light and moved in with some girlfriends) and realize that was a really fun date. But I just don't really like him. Or do I? I text him to tell him I got home- tell him that I am getting into my PJs and headed to bed. He texts me back, "Lucky Jamies". Oh brotherrrrrrrrrrr. Of course, there's still that technicality that I am dating the guy in accounting.
Over the next few weeks, the accounting guy shows me again what a loser he is and I am left with a goregous dress and nothing to do on New Year's Eve. I text M with my plight and he says it just so happens he has reservations for dinner & drinks at a club downtown. His friend and friend's girlfriend are in town. He later tells me he is relieved because the girl they were supposed to bring with them to be his date backed out at the last minute.
We go out- it is a fun night. There is no kiss at midnight, just a friendly peck on the cheek. I stay at his place since I have drank approximately 17 bottles of champagne and am in no condition to drive. We watch Elf at 3AM and end up kissing. It is actually very lovely. The next morning, which could be awkward.. as in, hey coworker, we kissed last night and I slept in your bed see ya Monday... was actually pretty normal. Until he kissed me again on the lips when he walked me to my car. In broad daylight. Yikes. :)
January 2009 was filled with actual dates. He cooked for me, we saw a million movies, he adopted a doggie. We went hiking and kissed in the elevator at work. He started looking for a new job because I jokingly told him I wouldn't get naked with anyone I worked with. (Ended up being a good thing as he is way smarter than those bozos) It just felt right.
And it was. In June 2009, my lease was up with girlfriends who were moving to the West Coast. It wasn't practical to spend half my paycheck on a studio apartment when I was spending a lot of time at his house anyway. The moment I realized that I loved him? When he said I should move in. And then casually said, "You know.. if you move in, and things don't work out- that doesn't have to be it. It just means we're not ready to live together yet". And it did work out. That's not to say there weren't some bumps along the road. There obviously were. One being the fact that I was 24 and living with a 38 year old. My Dad is pretty religious and while he is BFF obsessed with M now, that wasn't always the case. But somehow we managed to hold on during the tough times. We wove each other into our lives and into our families. We've taken great trips- our first to London and the Maldives over New Year's 2009. A great way to spend our first anniversary. We both moved on from the horrific company where we met. In June of 2010, he flew out Seattle to meet me. I had spent the previous week there for a work conference. He proposed on the Space Needle the day before my birthday. We got married last New Year's Eve in DC and had our reception at the Mt. Vernon Inn on George Washington's estate. We honeymooned and generally have spent the last few years thinking how lucky it was that our stars aligned and we get to be this happy. Don't get me wrong- I'm very hard to please and incredibly oversensitive. M talks too much about work and doesn't vacuum enough. We nit pick and sulk and he hates it that I go to bed so early every night. I don't know how he survives on the 4 hours he gets a night. But when it comes down to it, the day I saw that second pink line on that pregnancy test I took on a bit of a lark... I knew in my heart that I couldn't have found a better father for my child. And I think no matter how you get there, the fact that you did makes all the difference.
It was about 9:30 last night and I was about to turn out the light so I called downstairs with my perfunctory, "Goodnight I love you". M came upstairs and we were chatting for a few minutes when it dawned on me. It's just been the two of us (well, and Lucy... our four year old crazy yellow lab) for a long time. I kind of panicked. I kept commenting about how things will never be the same. My (now) bald Scott Hamilton smiled his megawatt smile, kissed my belly and said, "Nope... it sure won't."
I slept like a baby last night.
So, what in the world does any of that have to do with the story of us? Well, believe me.. if I hadn't dated a boy who used hand lotion on his "white boy fro" in lieu of hair gel (true story), I never would have realized how incredibly lucky I am to have ended up with a man like M.
So, after I moved back home to VA, I finagled a job at the company where my Dad worked. I got a job in marketing in the engineering department and was pretty much miserable from day 1. My boss was an angry man who thought nothing of screwing people over for fun. It was a horrific commute and at the end of that commute each day I found myself living back in my childhood bedroom at my parents house. Granted, I was only 22 at the time, so it wasn't like it was too out of the ordinary, but let's just say that was a phase I'd rather forget. Bright spot at the office? Working at an electrical/engineering company, there were only 3 single girls in their 20s in the office. One was the VP's daughter so that was a no-no, the other was a little nerdy and that left me. While I readily admit that I am no Heidi Klum- and I was carrying at least an extra 15 pounds of college kegger/bad breakup weight AND I for whatever stupid reason decided to chop my beautiful long blonde locks into an unforgiving bob- I was the only 20 something in an office of dudes. And they loved me. The accounting guy was delicious in a way that only people with perfect teeth and negligable IQs are. We went to football games, drank a lot of beer, made out a lot and things fizzled out after one monday football game where he got drunk, made an ass of himself, nearly got murdered by blood-thirsty Pittsburgh fans and I had to drive home. Then there was the Business Development guy. A perfect waste of time. I really went through a phase where I went after guys who thought they were much studlier than they really were. I suppose we will be nice and call them "confident". Anyhoo, this guy was a loser on par with the hand lotion guy. It gave me something to do besides facebook all day at work, so he served his purpose.
Now on to my dashing DH. He, too, worked at this life draining pit of a company and he was ACTUALLY an engineer. Pretty wild. When I first began my work there, he was overseas on a contract with the company. We exchanged a few e-mails, none of them pleasant- he didn't get along with one of the higher ups and felt no issue with making that clear to me. I had to send him a few things and got a load of his birthdate- 8/10/71 and knew that even when he returned in a few months time, he was unlikely to be my next flavor of the month. He was *gasp* 14 years older than me.
Fast forward a few months. Still stringing along the dopey BD guy since there really wasn't much else going on. M arrives into the office and I feel... nothing. He is pleasant enough, but I am quick to let the others know that he is under no circumstances to be invited to "lunch bunch". I remember his snarky e-mails and am pleasant but cool.
Time marches on. M manages to ingrain his way into our lunch bunch (I mean, it was a bunch of 40 year old engineers talking shop in a basement cafeteria, so no real feat there...) and I find myself occasionally laughing at his poorly timed and ill-told jokes. I find that he is warm and engaging and hates my boss just as much as I do. But still... he kind of looks like Scott Hamilton. You know, the ice skater. Hmm.
One day there is a fire drill in our building. I am nursing an intense hangover and M picks up on this. During the fire drill, he drives me around the corner to CVS for some emetrol to help my stomach. "He's nice", I think. We become friends. After one particularly bad day at the office, he takes me out for French food. We drink expensive wine and talk about our childhoods and laugh a lot. I remember thinking that's how all dates should be- but hey, this wasn't a date. Remember? He's technically old enough to be my father. He looks like Scott Hamilton. Must be the wine.
We really develop a friendship after that. We text during meetings about what douches we work with, join in on work happy hours and I take him to the airport when he gets sent back overseas for a few weeks. Once he's home, he gets a belated birthday gift from our company- a dinner giftcard and a movie certificate. I am standing near him and joke, "When are you taking me out?" (I have recently started dating the hot accounting guy again... a glutton for cuteness, you could say) He mumbles and stutters and we agree to go out later that week.
We hit the restaurant. It's lovely. He orders a Key Lime Pie Martini. Ahh, it all makes sense why we get along so well- he's GAY! But wait, wasn't he married before? We see "Burn After Reading" which is a strange movie- especially when George Clooney fashions some sort of dildo horse... kind of awkward when you could be on a date, but it's not a date with a friend who may or may not be gay. Hmm. After dinner, M takes me out for drinks. We laugh. A lot.
I get home (thankfully at this point I have seen the light and moved in with some girlfriends) and realize that was a really fun date. But I just don't really like him. Or do I? I text him to tell him I got home- tell him that I am getting into my PJs and headed to bed. He texts me back, "Lucky Jamies". Oh brotherrrrrrrrrrr. Of course, there's still that technicality that I am dating the guy in accounting.
Over the next few weeks, the accounting guy shows me again what a loser he is and I am left with a goregous dress and nothing to do on New Year's Eve. I text M with my plight and he says it just so happens he has reservations for dinner & drinks at a club downtown. His friend and friend's girlfriend are in town. He later tells me he is relieved because the girl they were supposed to bring with them to be his date backed out at the last minute.
We go out- it is a fun night. There is no kiss at midnight, just a friendly peck on the cheek. I stay at his place since I have drank approximately 17 bottles of champagne and am in no condition to drive. We watch Elf at 3AM and end up kissing. It is actually very lovely. The next morning, which could be awkward.. as in, hey coworker, we kissed last night and I slept in your bed see ya Monday... was actually pretty normal. Until he kissed me again on the lips when he walked me to my car. In broad daylight. Yikes. :)
January 2009 was filled with actual dates. He cooked for me, we saw a million movies, he adopted a doggie. We went hiking and kissed in the elevator at work. He started looking for a new job because I jokingly told him I wouldn't get naked with anyone I worked with. (Ended up being a good thing as he is way smarter than those bozos) It just felt right.
And it was. In June 2009, my lease was up with girlfriends who were moving to the West Coast. It wasn't practical to spend half my paycheck on a studio apartment when I was spending a lot of time at his house anyway. The moment I realized that I loved him? When he said I should move in. And then casually said, "You know.. if you move in, and things don't work out- that doesn't have to be it. It just means we're not ready to live together yet". And it did work out. That's not to say there weren't some bumps along the road. There obviously were. One being the fact that I was 24 and living with a 38 year old. My Dad is pretty religious and while he is BFF obsessed with M now, that wasn't always the case. But somehow we managed to hold on during the tough times. We wove each other into our lives and into our families. We've taken great trips- our first to London and the Maldives over New Year's 2009. A great way to spend our first anniversary. We both moved on from the horrific company where we met. In June of 2010, he flew out Seattle to meet me. I had spent the previous week there for a work conference. He proposed on the Space Needle the day before my birthday. We got married last New Year's Eve in DC and had our reception at the Mt. Vernon Inn on George Washington's estate. We honeymooned and generally have spent the last few years thinking how lucky it was that our stars aligned and we get to be this happy. Don't get me wrong- I'm very hard to please and incredibly oversensitive. M talks too much about work and doesn't vacuum enough. We nit pick and sulk and he hates it that I go to bed so early every night. I don't know how he survives on the 4 hours he gets a night. But when it comes down to it, the day I saw that second pink line on that pregnancy test I took on a bit of a lark... I knew in my heart that I couldn't have found a better father for my child. And I think no matter how you get there, the fact that you did makes all the difference.
It was about 9:30 last night and I was about to turn out the light so I called downstairs with my perfunctory, "Goodnight I love you". M came upstairs and we were chatting for a few minutes when it dawned on me. It's just been the two of us (well, and Lucy... our four year old crazy yellow lab) for a long time. I kind of panicked. I kept commenting about how things will never be the same. My (now) bald Scott Hamilton smiled his megawatt smile, kissed my belly and said, "Nope... it sure won't."
I slept like a baby last night.
Well, hello there!
I am a lurker.
It started innocently enough. I found out I was pregnant in late September and before my first OB appointment, googled something really innocuous like, "Baby heartbeat 8weeks". That my friends, brought me to a whole new world of information. Deadbaby/Infertility blogs. There are a ton of 'em. And I've pretty much read them all, from start to finish. I started with Julie, then Julia, moved on to some L&D nurse blogs. They are now bookmarked in my favorites and I love keeping up with them now that most of them have elementary school aged children. I know more about infertility than some people who suffer from it. This, coming from the girl who decided to go off the pill to see "what happens" and is 20 weeks away from a baby.
This isn't the first time I've blogged. I had a rather extensive blog on a popular weight loss website. I've been a chronic dieter, binger, exercise fiend, beat-myself-up-er for nearly my whole life. We can attribute a lot of it to my upbringing and more importantly my *cough* Mom. Don't you worry. I have a feeling she will be making quite a few appearances in this blog. Probably me trying to send her home when she stays for weeks on end after "her" baby arrives.
So why this blog? To be perfectly honest, the blog I had on the weight loss site was great. It got me through my wedding, helped me discover a love of running and get some crazy thoughts out when all I wanted was a kit kat. The community there was/is great. It's just not the spot in life I'm at right now. It pretty much sucks to log in and hear all about people's New Years resolutions and see that week after week they are running half marathons and that they just bought a new size 4 pants. It is hard when I am still eating pretty properly, exercising at an acceptable level and I still gain weight and have bacne (that's back acne, in case you were wondering) like a high school football player. I know, I know... I'm pregnant. So that's why I am here now :)
I realized a few days ago that I really haven't been keeping track of my pregnancy all that well. To put it lightly, I am NOT one of those people who loves pregnancy. I don't. And luckily, I have a good enough head on my shoulders to realize that me not enjoying the gestation period has no forebearance on my abilities to be a good mother. I know that there are people who would KILL to be pregnant and I certainly can understand their position. Pregnancy has not been kind to me. Debilitating morning sickness and fatigue weeks 5-10. Started to feel better and at week 11 had a HUGE bleed. Like, I went upstairs one evening to take a shower and when I took my clothes off, it looked like someone had been murdered. Turned out, the baby was fine but I had a subchorionic hematoma- essentially, a blood clot in the uterus. Bed rest for a few weeks was prescribed. That sucked. Never in my life have a thought an all-expense (well, except for wages) paid trip to the couch for 2 weeks would be the worst idea ever. But it was. And if you've been there, or you are there, I'm sorry. But the main reason I haven't been keeping up with documenting everything about this pregnancy? I'm scared. Shitless. That something will go wrong. That this was just "too easy". After all, after I went off the pill, we had unprotected sex ONCE. I just keep thinking I don't deserve this and something is going to happen. I held my breath for my first appointment. I held my breath to hear the heartbeat. I didn't breathe for quite some time after I started bleeding. Each and every time I see her pop up on that screen (yes, our little sweetie is a girl!!! :), I let out the breath I didn't even know I was holding. My huge anatomy scan is coming up on Monday 1/16. I keep telling myself if I can get through this, or get through that, maybe she's really sticking around and everything will be okay. I realized that I have to let go at some point. Things could go wrong- absolutely. I've read too many blogs about babies that were "fine" and were stillborn due to cord prolapses or had genetic diseases that weren't discovered before birth. I've read about placental abruptions and statistics and I think once and for all, it's time that I STOPPED playing Dr. Google and tried to enjoy the last half of my pregnancy. Our little sweetie will be here before I know it. :)
I'm not trying to write a novel- after all, I'm not sure how many characters this thing allows. And I am sure that I have bored you to tears. There will be plenty of time to get to know my sweet hubby (we'll call him M), my nutball Labrador, my job (boring but definitely a step in the right direction), and my family (I could have a separate blog for their shenanigans). But for now, I'm focusing on remembering the little things that happen before the baby comes. That's it for now :)
It started innocently enough. I found out I was pregnant in late September and before my first OB appointment, googled something really innocuous like, "Baby heartbeat 8weeks". That my friends, brought me to a whole new world of information. Deadbaby/Infertility blogs. There are a ton of 'em. And I've pretty much read them all, from start to finish. I started with Julie, then Julia, moved on to some L&D nurse blogs. They are now bookmarked in my favorites and I love keeping up with them now that most of them have elementary school aged children. I know more about infertility than some people who suffer from it. This, coming from the girl who decided to go off the pill to see "what happens" and is 20 weeks away from a baby.
This isn't the first time I've blogged. I had a rather extensive blog on a popular weight loss website. I've been a chronic dieter, binger, exercise fiend, beat-myself-up-er for nearly my whole life. We can attribute a lot of it to my upbringing and more importantly my *cough* Mom. Don't you worry. I have a feeling she will be making quite a few appearances in this blog. Probably me trying to send her home when she stays for weeks on end after "her" baby arrives.
So why this blog? To be perfectly honest, the blog I had on the weight loss site was great. It got me through my wedding, helped me discover a love of running and get some crazy thoughts out when all I wanted was a kit kat. The community there was/is great. It's just not the spot in life I'm at right now. It pretty much sucks to log in and hear all about people's New Years resolutions and see that week after week they are running half marathons and that they just bought a new size 4 pants. It is hard when I am still eating pretty properly, exercising at an acceptable level and I still gain weight and have bacne (that's back acne, in case you were wondering) like a high school football player. I know, I know... I'm pregnant. So that's why I am here now :)
I realized a few days ago that I really haven't been keeping track of my pregnancy all that well. To put it lightly, I am NOT one of those people who loves pregnancy. I don't. And luckily, I have a good enough head on my shoulders to realize that me not enjoying the gestation period has no forebearance on my abilities to be a good mother. I know that there are people who would KILL to be pregnant and I certainly can understand their position. Pregnancy has not been kind to me. Debilitating morning sickness and fatigue weeks 5-10. Started to feel better and at week 11 had a HUGE bleed. Like, I went upstairs one evening to take a shower and when I took my clothes off, it looked like someone had been murdered. Turned out, the baby was fine but I had a subchorionic hematoma- essentially, a blood clot in the uterus. Bed rest for a few weeks was prescribed. That sucked. Never in my life have a thought an all-expense (well, except for wages) paid trip to the couch for 2 weeks would be the worst idea ever. But it was. And if you've been there, or you are there, I'm sorry. But the main reason I haven't been keeping up with documenting everything about this pregnancy? I'm scared. Shitless. That something will go wrong. That this was just "too easy". After all, after I went off the pill, we had unprotected sex ONCE. I just keep thinking I don't deserve this and something is going to happen. I held my breath for my first appointment. I held my breath to hear the heartbeat. I didn't breathe for quite some time after I started bleeding. Each and every time I see her pop up on that screen (yes, our little sweetie is a girl!!! :), I let out the breath I didn't even know I was holding. My huge anatomy scan is coming up on Monday 1/16. I keep telling myself if I can get through this, or get through that, maybe she's really sticking around and everything will be okay. I realized that I have to let go at some point. Things could go wrong- absolutely. I've read too many blogs about babies that were "fine" and were stillborn due to cord prolapses or had genetic diseases that weren't discovered before birth. I've read about placental abruptions and statistics and I think once and for all, it's time that I STOPPED playing Dr. Google and tried to enjoy the last half of my pregnancy. Our little sweetie will be here before I know it. :)
I'm not trying to write a novel- after all, I'm not sure how many characters this thing allows. And I am sure that I have bored you to tears. There will be plenty of time to get to know my sweet hubby (we'll call him M), my nutball Labrador, my job (boring but definitely a step in the right direction), and my family (I could have a separate blog for their shenanigans). But for now, I'm focusing on remembering the little things that happen before the baby comes. That's it for now :)
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