Tag Archives: pregnancy

Brain dump

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I just kind of want to babble and I feel guilty doing it at folks on IM sometimes. 🙂

We bought into the Disney Vacation Club. It is probably not the very best timing ever given all the other financial schtuff coming up right now (teeth issues, birth, increased health insurance costs with the new job) but it’s not going to screw us over in any way. I have been feeling really trapped lately and just knowing that I have that ability to go to a hotel for a few days and it is already paid for is actually helping me feel less panicked. Not to mention that as I’ve had a few days recently of feeling fussy/not well I have really enjoyed the escapism of getting to look into possibilities for future vacations. It’s kind of like playing Lottery Fantasy only I will almost certainly get to actually do it. 😀

Loneliness comes and goes. I’m doing better than I was for a while. I have started scheduling specific time with a friend and it’s actually helping. Knowing that he cares enough to carve out a specific day every month even though he is pretty frantically busy is giving me a hefty dose of, “Yes I’m worth some effort.” It helps that he and I share some very strong core values of shared labor. Granted I can’t do a lot of physical labor right this minute, but I can provide a big vehicle that enables him to get supplies for his projects in a way that doesn’t cost him extra money. 😀 And he knows I will start doing labor as soon as I am able. And he loves my kid. 🙂 Stuff with other people is less predictable so I’m kind of hanging my hat on this hang-out with this friend. It’s a lot of pressure for him but he has indicated that he doesn’t mind. And it’s only once a month. 🙂

I’m strangely excited about the kids resale event this weekend. (www.outrageousoutgrowns.com) I’m selling stuff we don’t want/need and I’m getting a cheap thrill out of making at least a little bit of money on the stuff that we have already used as much as we want to. I’m hoping to make enough money to pay for the next size up in Shanna’s wardrobe. Given that I don’t spend much money on her clothes it is a relatively modest goal and I’m selling an awful lot of stuff. So it’s random but I’m excited. I’m less excited about going to drop the stuff off early tomorrow morning with Shanna because I have to place everything out on the sales-floor by myself. That’s going to be uncomfortable. It’ll be ok though. Would anyone have any interest in going with me to the sellers early buying time on Friday evening?

I think it is really funny that I have turned Fetlife into a place where I go to argue about parenting stuff. Not how I pictured that involvement…

I don’t feel all that present in this pregnancy, which is kind of a hard thing to explain. I had that lovely haze of pregnancy euphoria a bit for a few weeks a few weeks ago. Lately I just feel kind of clumsy and lazy but not particularly excited about being pregnant. I have constant low level sour stomach (it always feels wrong to call it heart burn) but Tums make me feel disgusting in a whole different festive way. I’m having trouble feeling really attached to this fetus. I’ve been feeling movement every so often for a while. I’m definitely growing. But… it’s like the miscarriages made me afraid to love the baby before it arrives. I don’t like feeling this way.

I’m having a hard time processing how I feel about the upcoming delivery and how I feel about Shanna’s birth in retrospect. I feel… kind of defensive. I feel like the fact that I got pain meds means that I can’t ‘really’ handle labor even though I never got to the point where it felt all that painful. I feel like I must be lying to myself about the experience. Even though no one has ever contradicted my experience of my birth in any way I feel like there must be people who think that I am weak because I went to the hospital. I feel overwhelming shame about the fact that I needed sleep that badly. Which is really pretty stupid. I know logically that I am not a wuss/weak/pathetic because I needed sleep but I feel like those things are true. I’m scared I am not going to be able to handle the second labor. I’m scared that if it takes a long time I am going to cave much easier and not see a point in fighting for a natural labor because I am obviously too pathetic to handle one. I really don’t know how to handle these feelings. This physical sensation of being too weak/pathetic is overwhelming and I can feel it shutting down huge parts of my brain/body. I know that being afraid is going to cause me problems. My labor with Shanna wasn’t painful until I was beyond exhausted and terrified wondering how many more days would go by before it ended. I really don’t know what to do with these feelings.

Shanna says I am out of babbling time today.

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.

Thinking

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So I’ve been taking some time off. Maybe you noticed, maybe you were grateful that I shut my mouth for once. 😛 But yeah, stuff. I’m going to try a different technique for handling some stuff and see if it works for me. I miss writing here.

I’m nine weeks now. This pregnancy seems pretty willing to stick and that is wonderful. I’m much much much less sick than I was with Shanna (thank all deities everywhere) so I’m even feeling ok. I’m not feeling ‘normal’ and I’m not feeling energetic or anything crazy like that. But I’m not overwhelmingly sick and completely incapacitated so I consider that a win. 🙂 Humble expectations are important. I manage to do an okay job of interacting with Shanna during the day. We do a lot of cuddling on the couch and I am also incredibly grateful that she is so willing and able to entertain herself for long stretches. I know it is unusual. As a result of her playing alone a lot of the day she has been pretty needy in the evenings and the bulk of that is falling to Noah. Let me take a moment to say that my husband has stepped up in a variety of ways and man do I love him. He is doing ALL of the cooking and most of the cleaning and a much larger share of kid-wrangling than usual. As a result this is probably our last kid. That’s… as mixed as that kind of thing might be.

We went to Arizona to see Sarah. That was really awesome. It was occasionally challenging to deal with Shanna, but mostly she was her awesomely obedient and friendly self so it wasn’t too bad. It was really nice to get to sit down and talk to my Sarah again. It’s hard having her so far away. I miss her. Unfortunately we cut the trip a bit short. Has anyone noticed this storm we’re having? Yeah, I had to drive home from Arizona through that and I am really glad I left before things had gotten too established. The drive home was pretty hairy at times and it would have been much worse another day or so later from what I can tell. Also: the Grand Canyon is breathtaking. So far in all of my travels I have set Alaska up as my own personal definition of Most Awe Inspiring Place but the Grand Canyon kicked Alaska’s ass. I would like to go again while not pregnant and seriously hike it.

Oh, side thing: people who bring a two year old on a 2.5 hour train ride without ANY form of amusement or toy are flippin stupid.

I’ve been hibernating a lot more than usual lately. On one hand it’s lonely. On the other hand it feels like what my body needs and I’m drained from the basics of day-to-day life without any extra stress. See, this is why I miss my Sarah so much. I could whine at her about being sad and lonely and not wanting to leave the house and she would come visit. Ok, I’m not really sad. But I am lonely. It’s interesting how sometimes those two things are tied together and sometimes they aren’t. I’m starting to move into that placid slow-moving-brain thing I had when I was pregnant with Shanna. I feel like I’m seeing most of life from under water. Things are just slower and less sharp and that’s kind of nice. I feel … honestly kinda stoned. Ha. But it’s in a very nice way. I’m just drifting through life and that feels ok and good and right. If I could have this mental feel without feeling so physically debilitated I think I would want to be pregnant forever. If I couldn’t talk Noah into being quiverfull I would surrogate over and over. 🙂 But, I don’t get to pick and choose so no permanent pregnancy for me. 🙂

I saw my brother on the drive home from Arizona. That was shocking. I knew I was going to be driving within 2 miles of his house so I called him and asked if he wanted to meet his niece. After double checking that I wasn’t going to force him to deal with our mother he said he wanted to meet her. When I told him that I am not currently speaking with our mother he seemed to feel much better. We had about two and a half hours of sitting around talking. It was a really good conversation. He admitted things out loud that I’ve always suspected. I was shocked and impressed that he has gotten to a point where he can admit those things. He’s grown up a lot. He seemed similarly impressed with my attitude about his behavior of the past few years. I told him that I understand why he has felt he needed to make the choices he made but they still make me sad. I think I managed to convey how much I would like a relationship with him without being pushy or demanding or needy. I’m proud of myself for how I handled my end of things there. I’m really grateful that he gave me a chance. I’m not sure we are going to start having a close relationship any time soon, but maybe it will be a beginning.

Consider the needs of the child you have

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That’s a phrase bandied about in full-term breastfeeding circles. Full-term meaning at least until two years old. Two years is the minimum recommended time for nursing as stated by the WHO. Ok, so I’m not exactly one to follow all the guidelines as set down by the WHO so why do I pay attention to this one? If you look at biological studies comparing brain size/development humans should nurse for 2-7 years if compared to our nearest primate relatives. That’s a long time. Milk is necessary for the development of most mammals and no other mammal in nature weans in order to give the milk of another species.

At this point Shanna is physically developed enough to be able to digest milk from other species and I’m certainly not opposed to dairy (mmmm ice cream) but nursing is different. My milk not only is the absolute perfect blend of nutrients for my species, my milk is specifically calibrated for my child. That cannot be duplicated by a bottle of cow milk.

Why am I talking about this? Because when you are pregnant most women lose their milk. There are some women (I’ve seen this as 30%) who maintain supply all the way through a pregnancy. It is also possible to dry nurse through a pregnancy and then move on to tandem nursing. The reason behind dry nursing is that nursing is not just about physical/dietary needs, it also fulfills important bonding/psychological needs. I already have a hard time with unnecessary nipple stimulation. It will be much worse when I am pregnant. I’m nervous about dry nursing. I’m also worried about Shanna losing out on having milk solidly until she is two. That is the biological minimum humans should have. I’m not sure I’m willing to compromise on giving her the minimum.

But that means spacing our kids out more than I really wanted to. That means probably waiting at least another seven months. I have mixed feelings about that. The Meniere’s has been progressing quite a bit just lately and that makes me nervous. It looks like we definitely won’t be trying for three kids so spacing out Shanna and Little TBD is less of a problem than it otherwise could be. I’m not sure how I feel about spacing between kids in terms of potential future getting along/competitive stuff. All of that is guesswork anyway.

So yeah. It looks like the mature, responsible decision is to wait. It’s only seven months. The problem is that I don’t wanna.

Oh –good to pass on

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If you are like me and you spend much time wondering if you are pregnant due to inconsistent cycles, trying to get pregnant, trying not to get pregnant, whatever, I recommend heading on over to: http://www.saveontests.com/ You can get pregnancy tests for as little as $.34/test if you buy 100 of them. 100 pregnancy tests sounds like a really lot but given how irregular my cycle is I am willing to bet I have used at least 40 or so in my lifetime and I’m not done with testing. I’ve only had these cheap things for about the last 20. That means I probably have already spent over $200 on pregnancy tests when I could have spent $34 for all the tests I will ever possibly need. Sounds smart now doesn’t it? Ok, technically they expire in about three years but still! I could have bought a bunch of these every three years and still saved a lot of money. 😛 You can buy them in packs of 5 for only $3.25. No really, that’s awesome.

These boots were made for walking.

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And by boots I mean shoes. I’ve been walking further and further lately. Last week I did ten miles with my nephew. I only walked a little over two miles with DSH and Terps. Today I walked eight miles with a chick from my neighborhood. I’ve been pretty lackadaisical about following points but I’m getting smaller. My pants are more comfortable (whoo hoo!). I’m not real worried about getting down a size but I would like this size to be baggy on me so that I don’t have to move into maternity clothes at five weeks like I did last time.

I’ve been paying attention to the difference between healthy foods and low calorie/low fat foods. I’m not feeling so hot about putting all the chemicals into my body. I am slowly working through the low calorie versions of stuff and I’m not buying more. I feel really good in my body most days. My back is still sore but I’m carrying a 20 pound kid all the time. I’ve been to yoga once recently and I’m going to try and go again soon.

My goal is to not have to do the super intense gestational diabetes test during my next pregnancy. I was heavy enough that my midwife wasn’t comfortable skipping it with Shanna. I would also like to have enough fitness/energy to be able to be active and play with Shanna through my next pregnancy. I was out of shape before I conceived Shanna so I was a total slug for nine months. I won’t have that luxury next time.

No I’m not pregnant. I have no idea when I will even be able to get pregnant. This is all stuff I need to take care of in advance though and I’m most likely running out of time.