More Updates

First of all, the drama:  I had to go home early from work yesterday!  I was sitting at my desk not doing much of anything, so I don’t know what I could have done to bring it on.  I had some serious cramping/pinching on one side really low in my abdomen.  It was so bad that I couldn’t stand up straight.

I ended up going home and Marti had to help me out of my car by the time I got there, as it had gotten worse.  Of course, this is all about lunch time and the doctor is not in the office to consult yet.

I made my way in to the house, hobbling like Quasimodo, and found my way to the sofa where I was able to lie down for a while.  After calling the doctor and explaining exactly what it felt like, I was assured that it was probably just a pulled muscle and I should take some Tylenol and drink lots of water.  The usual, “If it gets worse or persists, then go to the hospital tonight” was enough to keep me on edge, but I did alright.  The baby has been SUPER busy in there, so I think she was aggravating everything and that caused it to be worse than it needed to be.

Long story short, I was fine in the morning and felt so good it was as if I had made the whole thing up!

So, that’s the extent of the drama so far.

In other news, my doc told me at my last January appointment that the baby has turned and her head is down now.  She of course followed that up with, “But there’s plenty of time for that to get screwed up…”  Gotta love her sarcastic sense of humor!

The heartbeat is in the 140s and, as stated before, she is VERY ACTIVE!  I don’t bother with kick counts.  Ten kicks in a 2 hour period is laughable for this little one!  She probably kicks me 1000 times a day, so I’m very aware of her activities:  morning, noon, and night!

Since I’m over 40 (42 to be exact), I will have to sit for twice-weekly monitoring of the baby starting at 36 weeks.  This should last about a half hour each time and she thinks Mondays and Thursdays would be best.  (ARGH!!!  So much for trying to keep up my hours at work!!!  That’s going to be a day breaker!!!!!)

It is kind of funny when she tries to get the heartbeat with the Doppler and she giggles because the baby won’t hold still.  I wonder how that’s going to affect their monitoring?  That is all new to me, as I didn’t have to do that with Abby.  I was a “mother of advanced maternal age” with Abby, but now the doc is throwing around phrases like, “Increased risk of fetal demise in utero.”

Uh.

Shut up with the “fetal demise” stuff, would ya?  A simple “increased risk” would suffice, thank you.

A friend asked me Tuesday if I’m excited.  It’s funny, but I had to answer, “No.”  I wouldn’t use the term “excited” to describe what I feel right now.  Believe it or not, it still doesn’t seem quite real.  SO MUCH has happened through the years and I’ve been told, “NO BABY FOR YOU” by fate so many times that I just can’t believe how easy THIS was.  Now of all times…

So, no, I’m not excited.  I’m still in a little bit of shock.  It’s not a bad shock.  Don’t get me wrong.  But it’s just like it’s too good to be true still.  I keep waiting for the rug to be yanked out from under me, I guess.

“Happy.”  I CAN say I’m happy.  And I hope that’s good enough for everyone trying to measure my mood.

“Overwelmed.”  There is still so much to do!  We went through the bits of baby stuff that survived the purge in April, and there is WAY less than I had even imagined!  I thought I had a FEW more baby clothes that I had set aside in case of babysitting emergencies.  However, that was a smaller box than I had remembered setting aside, and not even close to being full.

Now that we have all the furniture in the nursery, we can look at filling up the drawers and sorting things out that we’ll need now, as opposed to setting stuff aside that we can use later.  Other than a few basics for other people’s kids that I set aside, the clothes of Abby’s that I saved were sentimental, but for older babies.

Once I realized this, I had to make a run for Babies-R-Us and get a few basics.  It’s funny – as I was perusing the aisles, I actually realized that I have forgotten what I actually will need!  It’s like starting all over in SO many ways!  The best I could do was grab a multi pack of onesies and promise myself to figure it out later.

Marti and I are still working opposite schedules, so we see each other so seldom that we just have a hard time making time for these basic conversations.  He’s probably stressing more than I am about the situation and I know he’s making mental lists of things that haven’t even occurred to me yet.  (Such as gathering up info for tax season so we don’t have to do that with a screaming infant and no sleep!)  I love that he thinks ahead about some of these things!

Oh, and the minor catastrophe of the week is that I realized I cannot get the extra base to the infant carrier for the second car at Babies-R-Us!!!  I was going to get one and add one to the registry so my mom would know which one to get if she wants one again and realized they don’t even carry this brand!  EEEP!  It was a gift, for which we are grateful, but now I have to find out where to get spare bases for the cars.  (Shhhh!  Don’t tell Marti!  He thought we were all set there and this will make him into a Nervous Nellie again!  Ha ha!  PS – he reads here, so I’m totally kidding about keeping it a secret.)

That’s pretty much it except that I don’t know if I’m going to try a traditional birth or go with the C-section again.  I can’t bear the thought of 39 hours of unproductive labor just to have it end in surgery again.  But part of me thinks that I should let nature take its course before giving up on “how it’s supposed to work.”  While having this discussion with a coworker, I was told to watch The Business of Being Born. Hmmmmm….  Saw it.  Lots of food for thought!  (And lots of naked women in every vulnerable stage of delivery, so don’t rent it if you are uneasy about au natural birth situations!!)