Tag Archives: health

Yup, not doing this again.

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So this afternoon I need to go in to have liver testing stuff done and get a container for a 24 hour urine catch. Apparently I’ve been shrugging things off as no big deal that could actually be a big deal. Things like blurry vision with little spots of light dancing in my vision (I knew that some vision weirdness was semi-common during pregnancy). Severe sudden lower back pain (not crampy so I figured it was just a weird thing). Headache lasting multiple days that Tylenol won’t make go away (headaches are so common in my friends group that I don’t think that much of them). Mental confusion (isn’t everyone kind of batty when they are pregnant?). Major shoulder pain (I figured this was from sleeping on my side for months). Sudden nausea in the third trimester (I thought I was just unlucky). Stomach pain after not having a problem for months (different from my normal stomach acid pain–I can’t tell if I am hungry or full my stomach just aches like mad).

Hey, when you list all this out like this it looks kind of lame that I’ve been ignoring it. Well… it was always just one thing at a time and easy to ignore…

*sigh* I still have very good blood pressure (110/60) and my weight gain is still rather moderate (less than 12 pounds at 34 weeks) so I figured everything was all good. Guess not. Time to head off to the lab. 🙁

Pregnancy sucks so very much.

This is why I think I need a month of not leaving the house.

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How’s that for a subject? Yesterday I went and spent time with my cousin. She is getting ready to move back to Kentucky and I won’t see her for many years. It was nice to see her as at this point in time she is the bio-family member I am the closest to and that I like the most. Which is kind of sad because I have distinctly mixed feelings about her. (She’s nice and she means well, but she is a serious whiner and she’s rather dumb.) We walked around downtown Los Gatos for a few hours because the house just isn’t kid proof. They have a house full of sick old people and they have medication bottles everywhere combined with the fact that they have a bunch of animals and the house is dark and dim and gross because no one cleans very well. Not the best place for a curious toddler in my opinion.

We walked for probably 2.5 hours. Not that long, but we did cover a fair bit of distance. Today I am totally freakin wasted. I have no energy at all. I have this long list of chores I want to be working on but I just can’t bring myself to work. 🙁 I need to pick up a friend at the airport in an hour and a half and I don’t think I’ll get anything done before then other than eating lunch. Ugh.

I want many days of hanging out in my house so I can rest and do some freakin work.

Dubious gifts

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A lifetime of having an overly sensitive stomach has taught me the signs of vomiting long before I actually puke. It’s different from feeling nauseated which I can do for great lengths of time but there is no way I will actually puke. I generally have half an hour or so of notice that, “No really–it’s serious” so that I can go clean the toilet, pull my hair back, and just generally get settled. It’s a dubious gift but given that I almost always have issues with uhm problems from the other end when I am vomiting I’m awfully glad I get the opportunity to clean the toilet first.

Well, Debbie, you wanted me to post something. 😛

ETA: This is the suckiest part about being a stay at home mom. Unless I happen to get sick on the weekend I don’t really get a day off. 🙁

Great visit!

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I took Shanna to her first visit with a new pediatrician today. We switched insurances again so I had to start hunting from scratch. I like this chick a lot. She did her PhD thesis on Intergenerational Abuse Issues. That seems like someone I should maybe hook in with. She is tolerant though not enthusiastic about the really delayed vaccines. She didn’t have a problem at all with us skipping flu and chicken pox entirely. w00t. She was very willing to talk about best practices on parenting stuff and at one point she said, “It is so nice to talk to a parent who is educated!” I’ll be buffing my nails for a while after that one. She asked me pointed questions about a lot of our parenting choices and how we are going to handle support network/social stuff given our homeschooling plans but said that all my answers were the best they could be. I appreciate that. It’s kind of sad how badly I need the rubber stamp of someone in charge in order to verify that my copious research is actually correct.

And then we went off to start DTaP. The shot technician started off emphasizing the pain and how it was awful but it will be over quick. I told him to stop and then I sat Shanna on the table and we had a little chat about how it will pinch and probably not be her favorite thing ever, but shots are to keep us healthy and they aren’t that bad. I asked her if she could be brave and hold still and she did perfectly. The shot guy was really surprised. He told me he’s never seen a kid her age be so calm and collected. That surprised me. Really? Every single kid freaks out? If it is that pervasive then maybe he should think about the fact that his approach isn’t exactly reassuring. 😛

And the doctor was impressed with her vocabulary, counting ability, and ability to sing (almost all) of the ABC song. 😀 Yay kiddo!

Fuck that exercise shit

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Ok, so compared to blacksheep_lj it doesn’t count as exercise. Thank all that is holy that I do not have to be compared to her. 😀 Sunday I worked the resale even and spent four hours standing and walking rapidly on concrete. That is a much longer block than normal for that kind of activity for me. Monday I went out with a friend and spent a couple of hours walking in a park. Last night we walked to the park with Shanna and that’s a good 2.5 mile loop without all the walking back and forth we did to add on it. And we did that at the speed of toddler.

Holy crap I hurt. I don’t normally do that much walking in three days. I used to, but I haven’t this pregnancy. I feel like my uterus weighs about 30 lbs and it is sitting right on top of of a sharp pointy bit (my cervix). It fucking hurts when I stand right now. Ok, so on a scale of 1-10 it’s only like a 3, but I’m not used to that hurting! Whine! My back and knees are very sore and unhappy with me because basically all of this walking was on concrete.

But I never got winded even slightly. I didn’t have to take breaks to sit down much. Once last night, once at the park and those were both more because I needed to change angles for my hips more than anything else. My legs aren’t tired at all. Oh good. I’m not nearly so out of shape as I thought. 🙂 My joints are going to hate me right now no matter what I do. Three days in a row was probably overly ambitious but I really should start doing this at least three times a week. I don’t want to get as out of shape as I did when carrying Shanna. 🙂

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I was out of the house all day yesterday and came home kind of cranky. I’m not feeling stellar today either. I always feel icki the day after dental work for some reason even though this was pretty mild in terms of dental stuff. I will try to respond to comments tomorrow when I’m being less of a pill. I’m not mad at anyone or cranky with anything you are likely to figure out. 🙂

In other news: the implant process is completely done. I have a ‘tooth’ in that spot for the first time in 2.5 years. It’s kind of weird.

poor baby

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Shanna is some flavor of sick. She is whiny x’s 1,000. This is not normal. She is super clingy. She has a low grade fever. She keeps crying. She woke up in the middle of the night with a nightmare and had a terrible time going back to sleep. There is a youtube video, we call it The Hippo Song, and it absolutely terrifies her. She cries hysterically. (We’ve watched it 1.5 times.) She talks about how scary it is all the time. Last night she just couldn’t get over it. She has uhm intestinal distress.

My poor baby. 🙁

Not the excitement I was looking for.

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Maybe I should stop complaining that my life is boring. My life is not boring. My life is stable, safe, and awesome. Let’s go back to that. So uhm, I got to spend 5 hours in the ER today. Around 1:45pm I started experiencing mild lower abdominal cramps. They were intermittent and not too severe. Around 2:00 they started getting a little worse and it started getting hard to stand up completely straight. I started calling folks like my midwife, Noah, a friend who is also a midwife. The only person who answered was Noah. (I was at a friend’s house.) I told Noah I wasn’t sure yet what I wanted to do about it but I was concerned. Once I started getting fairly fierce lower back ache I burst into tears and announced it was time for the ER.

I sat in the waiting room for hours before finally getting seen at all. I spent a lot of time in the waiting room hunched over crying from pain. My midwife arrived after not too terribly long and we snuck off to the bathroom so that she could listen to the baby with the doppler. She said she didn’t know what was going on with me, but the baby sounded fine. My blood pressure instantly dropped. I stopped crying every time the fierce pain came and instead started breathing through what I was pretty certain was contractions.

For those following at home: I am 14 weeks pregnant. There is no way my baby could survive outside of me at this point.

Eventually I got in to see a doctor. (Amusingly this doctor is well known in the dance community. She immediately offered to get a different doctor if I felt uncomfortable with her giving me a pelvic exam. I muttered that given how many of her friends have already seen my crotch, one more person was no big deal. She tactfully ignored me. :D) She was friendly and professional. She didn’t feel anything problematic so I was back out to the waiting room so that I could wait and wait and wait for an ultrasound. It took another hour or so. The ultrasound technician was WAY chatty compared to my previous experiences telling me all kinds of interpretations of what he was finding. I’m pretty sure he was actually breaking rules but oh man am I not going to report him. The baby looked great. The baby is measuring a couple of days ahead of my dates but that’s not a big deal. The heartbeat was lovely. Development is universally on target or a couple days ahead. This is awesome. But I had a whole lot of confirmation that I was having very fierce contractions. My cervix was long and thick (that’s a good thing). I am no where near having a baby any time soon.

I had to wait a while longer to see a different doctor (shift change) so that I could get final results. No UTI. No obvious anything other than me having severe contractions. Uhm, I guess those just happen. Take Tylenol for the pain.

Then we were released. My midwife said that if I am not opposed, half a glass of wine should probably take care of quieting my uterus. I am currently sipping an awesome vintage.

You know, given how stressful my pregnancies are I really really really really don’t need to go through this a third time.

Weight

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It’s ok to talk about weight while pregnant, right? It’s not somehow verboten? Just checking.

So a friend whom I like and respect has told me that the best thing to do while pregnant is to look at your weight, cut that in half, then drink that many ounces a day in liquid (mostly water, of course). Thing is… I’m trying like mad to do this and I’m dropping weight. I feel hungry but unable to eat because my stomach capacity is maxed out. I’m shaky and kind of weak on the days I manage to get to 11 cups of liquid. (I should be drinking 12+ according to that theory.) But if I drink only as much as my body feels inclined to take in I’m drinking 6-8 cups of liquid a day and I can eat. I feel much better physically. I don’t shake.

I think that the ideal of tons of water might just be an ideal for me. I’m beginning to think that is really a bad idea for my health and my pregnancy for me to focus that hard on water.

(For the record my midwife’s general philosophy is: don’t get dehydrated.)

I’m thinking about this because I’ve been trying really hard to get in my liquid today. I am up to 7ish cups of liquid. And I’m shaking like a leaf. I feel like shit. I can barely move around. And I feel like I am starving but my stomach is full. I think I’m done with this.

*whine*

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I’m having oral surgery today. I’m still in the process of fixing shoddy dental work done when I was a kid. I’ve been on antibiotics since yesterday. I feel like I was hit by a truck. My stomach hurts. My head hurts. I feel dizzy and disoriented. My neck muscles are super tight and painful. I just want to curl up into a ball and cry. Shanna’s not up for that option though. Man. This almost makes me wish I could use the tv as a babysitter. 😛

hm.

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I made banana bread and brownies and those are both good. 🙂

I made jam and it didn’t set. Poopy. I think it’s cause the fruit was over-ripe. My reading says it is a common problem. That’s fine, we’ll use it on ice cream. 🙂

And Shanna was a bit shocked after the first shot and burst into tears after the second shot. She only cried for a couple of minutes and then has been fine all day. We are now in negotiation with the pediatrician as to which vaccines we will be doing next. Have I mentioned that I love my pediatrician? He’s an awesome guy. He’s trying really really hard to sell us on flu shots and he had some great statistics to back up his point of view. I’m going to do more research but it may be that we get flu shots this year due to some issues with H1N1 and pregnancy. We’ll see. We also need to decide about DTaP. That one… I have a lot of conflict about but it might make our schedule. MMR and Polio will both happen before our next overseas trip. This thinking about vaccine stuff is very anxious making.

She dropped percentiles on weight again. However she did gain half a pound which is upward progress and I’m happy about that. She is down to the 30% on weight. (21 lbs 4 oz) She is at the 81% on height (this is kind of neato). (31.5″) And head circumference has dropped a little but it’s still high. I can’t remember the exact number and I can’t find the piece of paper. 🙂

He was impressed with her vocabulary. 🙂 I am too so it’s awesome to be validated. 😀

I think that’s it for now.

(Icon because I just got out of the shower and I’m naked. 😛 )

busybusybusybusy

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I have been very industrious this week. I have been working from when I get up till late in the evening. I’m exhausted. Of course there is more to do. Every so often I get into these cycles of freaking out about the fact that there is Always More To Do!!! Then I decide I don’t care and I ignore allmost of it for a while. I wish I could get to that part already but I can’t. The big thing left to do in the garage is dismantle the shelves that are attached to the walls and I’m afraid that is going to be difficult work because pieces of it are very heavy. Taylor is coming on Tuesday (!!!) so we can get started on figuring out the garage stuff. I’m terribly excited. Yes, I’m aware it will take multiple days. 🙂 But Taylor unlike certain other people I could name but won’t isn’t a flake and will actually follow through when he says he will do a project with me so I’m not stressing. 🙂

We’re going to have a playroom! And I’ve started a fund for a play kitchen. 😀 I think that the play kitchen money should come out of my personal entertainment/fun money because I want it so bad. 🙂 Shanna really doesn’t care at this point.

I went to the orthopedic orthopedic? maxillofacial? surgeon today to discuss getting an implant. This is going to be expensive. 🙁 I briefly read the propaganda they had on the subject but I left it at the office cause it pissed me off. No, this will not magically make my life better. I am, however, quite interested in the procedure because it can help prevent bone loss/decay issues later. So yeah. And once I get the procedure done it is like three months until the next step. So I guess it’s a good thing we decided to wait like six months before trying to get pregnant. oy.

And I went to a physical therapy thing today for my knee. Shanna was remarkably good. She sat on the chair and drew on a piece of paper and played with my sweater for an hour. Ok… probably 45 minutes and then she wanted to nurse. 🙂 I’m once again impressed with my wonderful baby.

Boy howdy is she getting willful. I thought the ‘nononono’ didn’t start till more like two. Oy. When she’s not in the mood for something she is really not in the mood. It’s interesting. Of course I override sometimes when it is a safety issue. I try really hard not to override just because “I’m the mom”. I find myself having to fight my temper more now and that’s difficult for both of us. Like when I’m cleaning up the Cheerios she flung all over the floor. It’s ok that she made the mess but when I’m cleaning it up, don’t come in the middle and throw stuff again! Dude! So rude! I find myself talking about manners, rudeness, politeness, and consideration constantly. I’m sure there are a good many parenting gurus who would describe my system as awful. I’m very very judgmental of her behavior. It seems to me that if I’m not she won’t learn how to evaluate behavior. I never ever tell her she is bad. I do tell her constantly that she is good and sweet and generous. I tell her, “It is rude to yell inside because it hurts peoples ears.” I know she doesn’t ‘get it’ yet but I figure starting young will help ingrain these lessons. She does seem to understand, “Please stop” and respects it more often than I would expect at this age.

Maybe that’s enough babbling for now. 🙂

so much to do and so little time

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Today I made dinner. It took pretty much all day. I made pasta, pasta sauce, strawberry mash, and shortcake–all from scratch. That kind of preparation is a pain in the butt. All of the fresh ingredients came from the CSA box, the farmers market, or my back yard. 🙂 I’m tired. I don’t know how people used to cook from scratch every day. This is a pain in the butt.

Yesterday I finished my tattoo. I want to do a full post about that very soon with pictures.

Shanna continues to astound me with her development. I’m thrilled that I have a willing sleeper. When she realized she wasn’t going to get me to go lay down with her “nigh-nigh” “I can’t right now Shanna” she more or less asked to be put on my back and she took her nap there. I’m extremely sore but she’s in a great mood thanks to sleeping and I got my chores done. w00t.

Tomorrow we are going to Friday Night Waltz! I hope to see many people there. 🙂

I should ping because I keep thinking about her. I’m obviously awesome at initiating contact though. Oy.

I’m at day 42 of my cycle. The stupid sticks I’m peeing on still say I’m not pregnant though. This is making me fret for a variety of reasons.

I’ve been ordered PT for my knee and a hearing test to get more of a baseline on my disintegration a la (insert accent mark) Meniere’s. I really like my Kaiser doctor. She said despite my eyes, ears, and knee I am in excellent health. She didn’t even blink hard in the direction of my weight and she told me that I should have a bunch more kids because obviously I’m a great mother. 😀 She thinks I have a great attitude about the Menier’s and I think there is no point in having a poopy attitude. 😀

My house is a mess and I have dinner guests showing up sometime in the next half hour. I should probably get off livejournal. 🙂 I get to see my Sarah! I’m excited. It’s been so long. 🙂

Looking up

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So I was feeling all grumpy and cranky for a bit. Then we had sex. Then I was miraculously in a good mood. I think there is some sort of correlation there. 😛

Yesterday during Tango class I started having significant pain in my right buttock. Like a muscle spasm. It really sucked. Luckily I married the best boy ever and he worked on my thigh/butt/back and it stopped being agonizing pain. Now it is merely discomfort. It’s progress!

On the dance class front: mostly I’m having a great time. Last night I had a series of guys who had no frame so I started feeling a little frustrated with them. Luckily I kept managing to get the same specific guy over and over and he actually had frame so that was nice. 🙂 Noah is doing far better than he gives himself credit for. I think he has to overcome his mental block around “I’m a bad dancer” because when he’s not stressed out and freaking out he does alright. 🙂

I’m getting to socialize a lot lately and that is really awesome. It’s really wonderful that I am spending so much time with lots of friends. w00t!

In general things just feel so much better. I hate the hormones that come along with being a chick sometimes.