Oh and a Belly Update Too

My Butt Hurts

I think I need more padding on this baby. Meaning my tushy, not the baby. Though she could use some more padding herself. Of course, the more padding she gets, the more my butt's going to hurt. *Sigh*

It's so Thursday afternoon at 5 p.m. All of my tasks look so boring. I went through old voicemails. I have a voicemail in there from October. Which I left in my voicemail box. Mwa ha ha. Don't worry, it's just a creditor.

This post is boring even me.

Dh started the 3 Weeks of Hell on Monday. He is working 3 overtime shifts a week in addition to his regular 4 shifts until May 12. Yes, Gentle Reader, he is temporarily working 10 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Why would he do something so completely insane?

An excellent question. Anyone who knows Dh knows he is a consummate worrier. These overtime shifts are actually training which will allow him to get overtime shifts basically whenever he wants to in the future. This eases his mind regarding the whole "My Wife is Becoming a SAHM and How the Freak Can We Survive On Just My Income?!?!?" thing he is going through. Tonight is his first OT shift, so here's where it starts to get hard. He apologized in advance for:

1) How messy the house will be because he will leave his crap everywhere and never pick it up. (I really try to limit picking up after him because it pisses me off.)

2) How grouchy/rude/crotchedy he is going to be.

I don't think I like the whole "apologizing in advance" thing. How can I forgive in advance? I can't. I think he should take the "apologize every time I see my wife over the next three weeks" approach. Doesn't that one sound much better?

There are altogether too many long titles in quotation marks in this post.

In Which Honey Bunches of Oats with Almonds is My Salvation at 2 a.m.

I dawdled going to bed last night. Going to bed is just so boring. Didn't even take my shower until 1 am. Then I was SOOO hungry, and I heard that when you are hungry, baby is hungry, and if you don't eat, then you are basically starving your unborn child, which of course always guilts me into eating. Which I should really do any time I am hungry. Yeah. Anyway, so a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats for me at 2 am. Then of course I slept deeply only until 6, when I woke up starving again. But this time I squashed the guilty feelings because there was no freaking way I was going to get up for the day after 4 hours of sleep!! So I slept fitfully until it was time to be up around 8. Blech. Is the baby having a growth spurt or something? Seriously. I cannot be waking up every four hours just to eat. It's too weird.

We had Brian and Renee over for dinner last night. I made Balsamic Poached Chicken with Roasted Potatoes & Asparagus. Thanks, Real Simple. It was delicious, and easy. But you don't really need the sauce - I used chicken tenderloins, and they came out perfectly juicy. Renee is 10 weeks along. Yay! She seems pretty confident that it's a girl (she has a 3-year-old son). I hope it is, because then her baby and Baby Girl will only be about 5-6 months apart. And they can be friends. Ha ha

Really struggling with motivation at work today...

Oh and oops - Belated congrats to Isabel. She had her baby boy on Tuesday. Yay!!

33 Weeks

The 3-D ultrasound was yesterday (see previous post) and was A-frickin-MAZING. Worth every penny (and it cost not a few). We have already watched the dvd. As I watched it, I thought, 'NO ONE, except us, grandparents, and Baby Girl herself when she is older, will ever be interested in watching this.' But Dh already made his friend Brian watch part of it. Ha ha Because we are first time parents, so we are like that.

After the ultrasound, Dh had a meeting in the City of Roses, and I sat in the car working on Sudoku puzzles and making sure the meter didn't run out. I am glad we do not live in the city. I am just not a city girl. Sorry, Isabel. Too many people, too much. I like a slower pace.

Part of me (okay, most of me) still does not believe I am actually having a baby in approximately 6 weeks. It's surreal. Even after seeing her face! iVillage said baby's movements peak at 32 weeks, then space starts to get too tight. Ha! This is a lie. Baby simply pushes aside even more of my internal organs to accomodate her ever-growing limbs. Sometimes, it looks like she is trying to bust out. Dh laughs as she roils around, pushing my belly into really strange configurations. He laughs, and I pretend annoyance. And then lie on my side to make her move, because it is really uncomfortable!

Dh is over in eastern Washington for his brother's sealing. J acted surprised that I was not going too. Uh, hi. 7 1/2 months pregnant here, why exactly would I want to drive 8 hours round trip in one day? For any reason whatsoever???? And M-I-L acted surprised that Dh was not staying overnight. Oh dear, I think they are all googly over there, because:

1) Anyone who has been to eastern Washington knows there is not much to inspire an overnight stay.

2) Dh is already annoyed because he told his brother the 22nd was not a good day for us, but his brother scheduled the sealing for today anyway.* So Dh is missing his friend's actual wedding, so he can attend J's sealing. He hopes to be back in time for at least his friend's reception.

3) Last but not least, Dh's wife is achingly missing him back home, so why would he want to spend a lonely night in eastern Washington, when he could sleep peacefully tonight in the arms of Superhero Girl?

Exactly.

So anyway, today Baby and my insane body did not allow me to sleep past 7:30 am. Please, shed a tear for me. The White Skinned Goddess probably does not even believe that, because I used to be able to sleep in until 11. And occasionally even the early afternoon. But up at 7:30 I was. I finished Confessions of a Naughty Mommy, which was enjoyable. Now I'm off to take a long, hot shower and attempt to shave my legs (having some trouble being able to bend that much lately...)


*J is already married**, so I don't quite understand the rush.

**This means he's already had sex.

3-D Ultrasound

Even though I thought I would never do this...Baby clearly has Dh's pinchable cheeks and my fat bottom lip.



Baby won't be bald!

And she is definitely a girl.

P Marries the Canadian

June 2005.


"Can we go to the hotel now?"



Aren't my brothers studs?



Lyn, me, and Em.

Old Pics, But New to Me!

I just got these from my dad. And I will talk about my family's visit later. Posting old pictures is just more interesting right now.


My brother and I outside the Orlando temple, 2001.



Home for Christmas, 2000.



My dad and I, 2001.



Just us sisters! Christmas 2000.

May Baby?

In my dreams. Actually, I have this feeling Baby will not make it to June before being born. Marissa says it will be a May baby. Kevin (my boss) is sure the baby will come before May 18, my last day of work. This, I believe, is due more to Kevin being freaked about me leaving than some vibe about when the baby will actually come. I plan on asking the doctor at my next appointment how big she thinks Baby is, and how big she will be allowed to get.
So here's how ghetto my office is: the partners laid off the janitor because our incoming $$ went WAAAAY down after the new bankruptcy law went into effect in October. And despite the fact that things are picking back up, the janitor position remains unfilled. The office is disgusting. One of the other paralegals had to scrub the toilet because it was just getting too nasty. Of course the partners don't seem to care. Half of them are complete slobs anyway, so they probably like it better! No one knows who's in charge of buying soap, so when the soap level got really low, someone diluted it with water. I'm serious. I brought in some soap today, because give me a break! So now we at least have pretty smelling Country Apple soap. Basically May 18 cannot come soon enough! Then I can spend time in my CLEAN house. Even at its dirtiest, my house is not this bad.

What I'm Reading

Einstein Never Used Flash Cards
Comforting, because I never bought into the whole "flash cards for infants" thing. I heard about little babies reading, and it creeped me out. So this book reassures me that I can just play with Baby Girl and she will grow up nicely. (Plus, that's how I freakin grew up, and I turned out with a decent level of intelligence!) [Was that even good English? Did I just disprove my own statement? Blast!]




Is Jesus the Only Savior?
Interesting so far. I agree with almost everything the author has said. I like this analogy: Demanding outside proof of events in the Bible and only using outside proof (as opposed to internal evidences) is like writing a history of a small town, but discounting the town newspaper and only using information from Newsweek and CNN. However, he displayed his own bias by doing the exact same thing to dismiss the Book of Mormon. Bad form, Mr. Edwards. Logically inconsistant. I hate that.

Big Belly

You Are 30% Evil

A bit of evil lurks in your heart, but you hide it well. In some ways, you are the most dangerous kind of evil.

How Evil Are You?

Friday at my appointment, the doctor said I was measuring at 35-36 weeks! Obviously large, because I was only 31.5 weeks. She said maybe I have excess amniotic fluid. To schedule an ultrasound. She said 50% of the time it's nothing. Odds I did not find that comforting. But I wasn't too worried. Radiology said they'd call me to set up an appointment.

Dh and I headed over to the coast. We met up with friends Matt, Carrie & their kidlets, who were on vacation there. Fun times had by all. We went to lunch, the aquarium, the beach, dinner at a smelly brewery that had good food. Dh and Matt ran out into the ocean for old times' sake. Yes, they are both insane. The water of the Oregon coast is like 12 degrees in April. By the end of the day, I was completely pooped.

Saturday the boys had hoped to go crabbing. But it's the Oregon Coast! So it was raining. We went shopping instead. And I bought nothing at all for myself, but three things for Baby Girl. I thought I would never reach that point. Ha ha Matt was adorable - he went crazy and bought 4 outfits for Baby. Really cute stuff, too.

Saturday evening back at home Dh put together the TV armoire in the living room. He hooked up the TV and assorted crap. We watched the rest of Minority Report on tv. We chilled, and discussed plans for the future. We are one step closer to being able to put the baby's room together. We just need to get rid of the horrible 70s loveseat, then we can put together the crib & changing table in what used to be the TV room. We meaning Dh.

Radiology called me this morning, "Can you come in right now?" Um, yeah, good thing my office is flexible. So I had a quick ultrasound done, the tech said my fluid levels were just fine. She gave me a picture of the baby, but it's not very good. Baby just looks much bigger than in the 20-week pictures (duh).

So I guess the diagnosis is, "Superhero Girl, your belly is enormous! And will only continue to grow for the next two months until you have your baby!" Gee, thanks. Because everyone is already telling me how large this belly is, now my doctor has to jump on the bandwagon. Ha ha I guess I'll hear for sure about the belly size at my next appointment. I am now so far along that my appointments are 2 weeks apart. AAH!!!

Tonight my father-in-law is staying with us. He has medical appointments up in Portland. He might stay tomorrow night too. Friday my mom flies in. Saturday evening my dad, sister Lynn (13) and brother Benjamin (9) arrive. They are staying through Wednesday. When, exactly, will Dh & I get to pause for breath? Um, May. I'm not kidding. We have a friend's wedding coming up, both our birthdays, and our anniversary, all later this month. May, though, I plan on utterly wasting (i.e., savoring). Because once June hits....

One Year Anniversary (Looooong Post)

I don’t remember the date I found out I was pregnant. I’m not very good with dates like that. I can’t even remember the date I got engaged, for heaven’s sake. I remember the due date, though. October 3, 2005. Being pregnant was all I could think about, I was obsessed with it. I was constantly sneaking peeks at pregnancy webpages at work. I was bursting to tell people, but I wanted to wait until my first trimester was over. Which turned out to be a very good thing.

At about eight weeks I had very light spotting for a few days. It scared me a lot. I frantically searched online, and conveniently found the answer I wanted - that it could be trouble but was most likely nothing. My first prenatal appointment was the next week, on a Thursday. I asked Dh to come with; I was nervous and wanted him there with me.

As the nurse practitioner did the ultrasound, I could tell almost right away something wasn’t right. The uterus was like a big hole, and the baby was tiny, too tiny. She switched to the vaginal ultrasound. She said, “Something’s wrong - nice big uterus, small baby.” (No shiz something’s wrong.) Dh didn’t understand. “What kind of wrong?” he asked, smiling. I could just be not as far along as we thought, but she thought it was probably a missed miscarriage. Now Dh wasn’t smiling. She measured the baby, 6 weeks (it was supposed to be 9.5 weeks). I did a blood test that day, then was to come in 2 days later for another blood test. If my HcG levels were falling, the baby wasn’t alive. I knew that the results would be negative.

I am so glad Dh was there. I don’t know what I would have done if I had been by myself. I started crying at the doctor’s and I didn’t really stop for a long time. He was wonderful.

I cried and cried. I asked Dh to call my office and tell them I had a family emergency. Dh asked me what I wanted him to get me. I had been trying to eat very healthy foods only. But I wasn’t pregnant now - screw it! I asked him to get me a pizza and some McDonald’s fries. And I asked him to call our mothers. I couldn’t bear to tell people, not when the news was so very fresh to me.

I hadn’t realized how much I wanted that little baby. Dh held me. He didn’t know what to say, so bless him, he said, “You’ll get pregnant again, you’ll have a baby.” I beat my thighs with my fists. “I don’t want some baby, I wanted this one!” I cried more.

Dh came back with the pizza and fries. We watched a couple of episodes of Alias. It took my mind off what was happening. I felt numb.

Rainbow called that afternoon. We had plans to go out that night with JDub. She asked me how my appointment had gone. So I told her. I cried, and she called me sweetie, which I still think is kind of funny. She asked if I still wanted to go out, and heck yes I did. Rainbow and JDub are two of my very best friends. They gave me hugs, and love. They only asked a few questions, and let me control how much it was discussed. And I was able to forget for a little while.

I don’t work Fridays, so I didn’t have to worry about work until Monday. I honestly don’t remember that weekend. I’m sure it sucked.

On Monday I was supposed to call the doctor for the results of the blood tests. I didn’t want to call from work, so I went to Sister B’s apartment. When I told her, she was absolutely shocked. She didn’t think something like that would happen to someone young and healthy. And of course, she had had no trouble getting pregnant and her daughter was already a year old by then. The nurse told me my level was falling. I had had a few days to get used to the idea, so I took the confirmation pretty calmly. I wanted to let my body do its thing. She said if I hadn’t miscarried within two weeks, they would need to do a D and C.

I went through that week in a haze. I felt kind of despondent, knowing the baby inside was not alive. That weekend we had plans to go to Dh’s parents for his brother’s missionary farewell. Something told me to bring the ol’ maxi pads.

Friday on the drive over (it’s a 5-hour drive to my in-laws), I started having very sporadic cramps. I started spotting Friday evening. By Saturday afternoon, the cramps were still sporadic but stronger and more frequent. The nurse and nurse practitioner had both been pretty vague about the actual miscarriage, and I hadn’t been able to find very specific information online either. So I didn’t really know what to expect. The nurse said, “The pain will be less severe once the product of conception has passed.” I remember that sentence specifically because I wanted to snort at the term “product of conception.” And then later looking back I wanted to really snort at the fuzziness of the phrase “the pain will be less severe.”

Saturday afternoon I talked to my mother-in-law about the two miscarriages she had had. It was interesting, but I don’t know how helpful exactly. Her miscarriages took place about twenty years ago, after she already had four children. It would have been nice to have someone near me who had miscarried recently, and in their first pregnancy. I think that makes it a whole different ballgame.

By Saturday night I was in a lot of pain. Dh and I were cuddled on a sofa in his parents’ basement watching a movie. When the contractions (yes, that’s what they were at this point) came, I would grab his hand and make him push really hard on my uterus (he could push a lot harder than I could, and could get better leverage). It helped relieve the pain. After a while, watching the movie became pointless, I was hurting too bad. I went up to our room. I think that not knowing what to expect was kind of good in a way, because I just gave up to my body and didn’t try to think about what was happening. I ended up on my hands and knees on the bed, breathing through each contraction. And crying. It hurt a lot. The contractions were only 2-3 minutes apart for a while. They eventually lessened somewhat and I went to bed. And actually slept. I’m not sure how I did that, probably another blessing from above.

I think I woke up from the pain around 6 or 7. Slept fitfully until my mother-in-law woke us up at 8 to get ready for church. Dh hopped in the shower. I was getting changed, when suddenly my body said, Push. So I did. Maybe I should have let my brain kick back in first, ha ha. Not the smartest thing to do, push when you are naked in a bedroom, on carpet. I lunged for a pad and was able to get it under me. I crouched over that pad for some long minutes, really only 3 or 4 minutes. Luckily for me, Dh doesn’t take long showers at his parents’ house (their shower is tiny). I stayed pretty calm until Dh came back in. Then I lost it. There were some blood drops on the carpet, and I was most worried about that. You know how your brain gets in those situations, all weird. I was worried it would stain. I don’t think Dh completely knew what was going on, then he looked at the pad and said “Oh my gosh” in this 'holy crap' voice. Then he was super calm and fantastic. He cleaned the carpet, which was of course fine, and just generally took care of me.

And I still went to church. Only 15 minutes late too. The Playa’s mom was there. Another gift from God. Her daughter down in Provo had just gone through a miscarriage, and she hadn’t been able to go down and take care of her. We held each other for a long time. I don’t think she knows even now that I had just started miscarrying that very morning. I should probably tell her what a help she was to me.

All Sunday I had very painful contractions. I figured out that after two such contractions, I should go to the bathroom to avoid mess as much as possible. I wasn’t much fun at the farewell for Dh’s brother.

As if this hasn’t all been TMI, well I’m not just typing this up for you, Gentle Reader, it’s also for me. And it’s also for some girl out there who just found out she is going to miscarry and she wants to know what the freak is happening to her. There were clots like you would not believe. Huge clots. But I didn’t see the baby. It was too tiny, I guess.

We drove back to our house Sunday night. Monday I was back at work. For some reason, it didn’t really occur to me to not go to work. Me. Who loves to skive off work whenever she can come up with a good reason. Monday wasn’t bad anyway. By that point, I would call the pain “cramps.” I think by Wednesday the cramps were gone. But I was still bleeding.

Here’s how my periods work: they last a full 7 days, occasionally even 8 days. But the bleeding is only “heavy” the first 3 days. (Heavy in quotation marks because it’s not really heavy.) By day 6, I just wear a pantiliner. Yes, my period is that light. So the bleeding from the miscarriage was kind of freaky. It was bright red, for days and days. And lots of blood too.

The nurse said, No sex until you stop bleeding. We wanted to know how come. She explained it in such a vivid way: “Your uterus is basically an open wound right now.” Yeah, that pretty much killed a desire to cheat on the “no sex” rule. Though it sucked, because I bled for about 10 days.

Finally, finally I stopped bleeding. I went in every Friday to get my HcG level tested. When it was back to zero, we could start trying again. That only took a month. Technically we were supposed to use protection in the meantime. Um, yeah.

Fast forward to October 3, 2005. I took a pregnancy test. It was positive. I burst into tears. Now that baby is squirming around inside me and will be born in about two months. The most powerful feeling I had through this whole experience was the sensation that I was in God’s hand. That he knew the big picture, and was protecting me. I felt that so powerfully. And finding out about Baby Girl on that baby’s due date was one more sign of His love. I was so bowled over about being pregnant (yes and scared too) that the significance of the date didn’t even occur to me until a day or two later. It is simply no longer possible for me to doubt God’s love for me.

In November Dh and I sat with the same nurse practitioner and I held Dh’s hand so tightly and we watched Baby Girl’s heart pump-pump-pumping away. And I think even he was a little misty-eyed.

One Year Anniversary

I just read this article and it really made me want to write about my own miscarriage, which happened last March. But it has to wait until this evening, because I'm at work, and I've already goofed around too much today.