Back To It

While my body finishes repairing itself from Princess Wiggle-Worm's birth, we're getting the paperwork started so that it's in place and we're ready to do an embryo transfer for Surrobaby #2 in probably January or February. This time, fortunately, I won't have to play the cycle-syncing game, and the clinic knows to give me a little more of the meds that build up the lining of my uterus this time around.

Hopefully this will allow for less hormonal fluctuation, because last time, poor hubs and a very close friend of his caught the brunt of a meltdown last time. They've since been warned not to plan any long trips while my body adjusts to a new hormone regimen.

(>_<)

The Incredible Shrinking Woman

As of five days postpartum, I actually fit into my pre-pregger jeans! WOO HOO! Granted, that's still a size 16 but hopefully it suggests that I may even wind up smaller than that by the time I lose all my "baby weight!" Then again, I'm not entirely sure how long it takes for said "baby weight" to finish coming off. It may be that I won't get an inch smaller. Here's hoping, though!

Thankfully, "the girls" are no longer melon-sized lumps of adamantium. Cause yeah. That. Hurt. They seem to have returned to something akin to their original state. Milk production has slowed dramatically, and having acquired birth control pills once again, hopefully the milk will cease to flow in short order.

I'm also on my third day back at work. Part of me missed being busy and having things to do. The other part still really hates getting out of bed in the morning. I'm looking forward to getting back to riding my bike to work in the mornings, though. Only a couple more weeks to go!

Whining (aka. Baby Blues)

Day three home from the hospital, day four since delivery. This, I think, is about the right timing. Well, I wouldn't call it "right" per se; I feel miserable. But the timing is appropriate for Baby Blues to set in. So instead of wallowing for days on end, I'm going to try to vent now and hopefully this will allow me to logic my way through the rest of it.

I've been living in a state of perpetual engorgement since Sunday evening, and had just begun to think that I had trained my breasts to scale back on production when I got a phone call from I.F. saying that he and Princess Wiggle-Worm were heading home. Now, this is wonderful news! Except, it turns out he wasn't going to come down after all to pick up the breast milk I've been expressing for him since I left the hospital. Yes, yes, I've agreed to freeze it in case he can come back and get it, but it might have been nice to have been given a little bit of notice, so I could scale back on expressing more than I had been. Since Sunday, I have made Dolly Parton look absolutely prepubescent. Now I'm bound up so tight my ten year old is proportionally larger-chested than I am. This. Is. Painful.

And no one has come to visit or called. Which bums me out, but I can't expect people to drop everything, either. They have lives of their own.

Urrrgh... Sore.

I'm finally at home. Hubs took me out to a lovely meal at Outback. I ate a real-sized meal for the first time in WEEKS! WOO HOO! Of course, I really like what eating small meals has done to my shape, so I'm calling this my splurge and will be returning to a far more moderate menu henceforth. But WOW, did I enjoy my lobster tails, 6-ounce sirloin and sweet potato, and yes the cheese fries we shared were DELICIOUS!

I've been expressing breast milk for Princess Wiggle-Worm too. I was having trouble at first, because basically, my nipples were clogged. Now that I've roughed them up to the point of *ouch* the milk is flowing much more freely. No colostrum from THIS Holstein, ladies and gents; I produce the real thing. This makes Daddy and the nurses happy, as the Princess has a bit of jaundice. (Not to mention that breast milk is just better for babies than formula.) I'm not sure whether I'll be asked to continue doing so yet, but we'll figure it out tomorrow when I go pick MY princess up from her father's house and drop off what I've pumped this evening and what I pump tomorrow.

My breasts are sore, my bits are sore, and overall I feel like I've been beat up and rung out but overall satisfied. And the best bonus: I get to sleep in my own bed, snuggled up with Hubs for the first time since Wednesday! -GWEE!-

Presenting Princess Wiggle Worm!

Hubs and I got up at 5:30 yesterday morning to get ready to wait for "the" phone call, telling us to come in for induction. It didn't come till 10:00am, but it did in fact happen. We arrived at the big hospital around 11:00am and started the process of getting me monitored and hooked up to all the machines, blah, blah, blah.

Labor began around 1:00 in the afternoon in earnest, not long after my water broke. I have to admit I was pleased that it ruptured on its own; that was one of the things I wanted to experience spontaneously. And man, oh man, was it. I had been instructed to sit on a birthing ball and rock a bit to get her into a good position, and at one point I had rolled my pelvis forward and heard/felt a loud "pop" almost as if the bones of my pelvis had slid over one another and then popped back into place. Next contraction there was a tsunami gushing all over the place.

I got to float around in the labor tub in my room for a while, and you know what? I now fully understand why they call it the Midwife's epidural. Unfortunately Princess Wiggle Worm didn't like not being surrounded by water, so the doctor had be crawl back into bed and they did the first of what turned out to be several amnio-infusions (they slid a catheter into my uterus, past the baby's head and kept it full of sterile water.)

Labor progressed unmedicated until around midnight-ish (give or take). I was well into moaning "OH" at the top of my lungs and trying to use the sound and the motion to keep my birthing bits relaxed and working in my favor, and just needed a break. So I broke down and called for an epidural. Yeah, I know; wuss. I'll have other opportunities to try again. Even with the epidural, I never did get relief on my right side. :P

This continued for quite a while, with the doctors and nurses intermittently worrying about decelerations in Wiggle-Worm's heart rate. At one point Cesarean was suggested, but the docs and nurses were able to use gravity to get her head past my cervix in relatively short order, and in what felt like almost no time, they were standing around my bed in their delivery scrubs, telling me it was time to push. Three pushes (they say two, I say three) later, she was delivered. She did have her umbilical cord wrapped twice around her neck, but the resident fixed that once I got her head out, and she was pink and pretty literally within minutes.

The new and interesting part in all this was that my placenta did not want to break free from the uterine wall. This meant that the resident had to remove it manually. As hubs so eloquently puts it; I became a hand-puppet. Delicious imagery, I know, but *holy crap* I did not expect anything like that! It wasn't horribly painful per se, but it certainly was uncomfortable.

She spent the next two hours being adored and snuggled and warmed up against her Dad's skin, and ate a healthy 14 ounces of formula before we were even moved to maternity.

Today has been a lot of recuperation and rest, but I've pumped a little bit of breast milk for her and helped the nurses out in the nursery for a while (originally with the intent of paying some attention to the Princess; but she had to get some tests done, and so I wound up helping with a couple of the other babies as well. I guess I look like I know what I'm doing or something. LOL.)

A lot of people have been concerned that this would somehow damage me emotionally; letting Princess Wiggle Worm go with her father. And I admit, I started to get a little concerned the last couple days, that I would get mopey or break down; especially after delivery. But you know, I'm still really not attached. She's a beautiful baby for sure, and she's very mellow and very tough (not a peep out of her after being jabbed and poked and stabbed for tests by the nurses) but I'm no more bothered by "letting her go" than I would be about watching a friend's baby go home after babysitting her for a couple hours one afternoon, so that friend could run some errands.

As for the physical, I'm sore in the birthing bits. I did tear a little bit, so I have a couple of stitches and well let's be honest; I pushed a small human out of those bits and then had to have hands in places I don't think they really belong. I'm gonna be a bit sore.

In perfect honesty: I'm happy that I've done this. I'm excited for my I.F. And you know what? I can't wait to do it again.

Overdue. Of course.

I am officially overdue. I was scheduled to pop yesterday, but of course Mother Nature tends to enjoy messing with doctors' predictions and plans. Admittedly, I'm a little annoyed, cause while I love my little Buddha-belly, I'm ready for a break, and maybe to talk about me and hubs getting a shot at our own little Bundle of Strange.

Anyway, I had my first non-stress test today. The doctor said everything looks beautiful; Wiggle Worm is living up to her name; my blood pressure is good, yadda yadda. Also, the 5 pounds of water weight I had picked up between my last two visits is gone, so that's also good. No protein in my UA. I'm healthy, as ever.

Not feeling very pretty today, though. Matter of fact, I'm rather in a funk. I'd rather go hide in a hole than be out where people can see me. Quasimoto has nothing on me.

Flash Floods

Thursday night was an adventure, to say the least. We had severe thunderstorm warnings all day that suggested heavy rain, hail, wind gusts up to 70 miles per hour; even tornadoes. We got all of the above. And flash flooding in my town. Hubs had gone to a friend's house before the storm; way out in the boonies. Mom and I ran out to the store to get a few things she wanted. Of course, we heard all sorts of exciting stories about severe weather in the capital, so we ran down the hill to see. Mom insisted that we could get home via the low road, but alas, as I had warned her; it had flooded in front of the local newspaper and that road was closed. We went back and tried the high road. It was also closed. We tried a sneaky back way that normally leads straight to our house. Blockaded. So I hopped out to see if there was any way to get down to the house, where the munchkin and Mom's hubs were waiting for us. By now I was also trying to direct hubs and his friend to the house, as they had lost power due to the storm. I sent Mom back to her sister's and hubs back to his friend's house when I discovered that the water was thigh-high and moving very quickly. I sloshed my way back to the house to find my street a veritable river. The main road was impassable and firefighters were arranging a voluntary evacuation. Not so much fun. In addition, by 12:30am Friday, the basement was flooded and rising fast. I barreled down the stairs and started throwing as much up to my stepdad as I could, and he piled it into the kitchen. Unfortunately, given my condition, I was only able to save about eight boxes worth of their stuff. By 4:00am, the basement was flooded to within a foot of its ceiling. We decided that if the water continued to rise (instead of spreading back out into the yard and the street once it reached the windows) and threatened to flood the first floor, we would evacuate. Fortunately, it didn't. By some inexplicable phenomenon, we never lost power, despite the circuit breaker being submerged for a good chunk of the evening. We didn't lose cable or internet, despite all the damage outside. The only thing we did lose was hot water, but we made do by heating pots of it on the stove, so no real harm there. On top of all this, our little sump pump magically became the little engine that could! By 7:00am Friday, the water in our basement had been more than halved in volume. By 11:00am, we were down to no more than two inches. It did rain some more, and that caused the level to rise a little, but nothing nearly as significant as it had been.

The whole area has suffered damage. Way out in East Podunk where hubs and his friend were, an entire section of road had been washed out and was impassable. Someone's car had been lodged in said washout. It didn't take too long to sort that mess out, but by the time it had been resolved, every road that might bring hubs home had been closed due to flooding. RAWR! Said I. I'm not going to say I wasn't worried that I might go into labor while he was gone. Thankfully, I did not. Despite heaving and hefting and moving and being on my feet as much as I have, Princess Wiggle-Worm is still firmly lodged in my guts.

Today was "muck-out-the-basement-day." What. A. Mess. We found a bunch of stepdad's pictures of his kids, including his late daughter, so my project was to save as many of those photos as I could. There are still more pictures to wash and dry, but thus far I can proudly announce that out of 150+ photos, I have not lost even half a dozen people photos (I'm sorry, but given the sheer volume of work to be done, I am not going out of my way to save a bunch of pictures of landscapes and zoo animals. Pets, fine. Zoo creatures, no.)

That said, I am tired and have very swollen feet and ankles. So I bid everyone good night and sweet dreams.

Breech? Vertex? Breech? Vertex?

Went up to the big hospital for my weekly poking and prodding (not really; they're actually very non-invasive) and had a good laugh at the hospital staff's expense. We had an ultrasound last week, and confirmed that Princess Wiggle-Worm is definitively vertex (head-down). The week before that, the doctor palpated my belly and said she was certain the baby was head down. The week before THAT, another doctor palpated my belly and charted that yes, she also believed the baby to be in vertex position. Apparently the week prior to THAT, this same doctor was concerned that Wiggle-Worm might be breech. That concern has somehow pervaded my chart, despite all medical evidence to the contrary. So hubs and IF and I are sitting around post-blood-pressure-taking and confirming-of-medicines-I'm-taking, and the doctor comes in and says "So I heard a rumor that you're breech." My poor IF's eyes looked like they were gonna pop right out of his head.

I explained to the doctor that no, Princess Wiggle-Worm is NOT breech; that she and another doc had surmised this through external palpation, and that the ultrasound was very clear last week. I also told her that the head nurse had called me several days after the ultrasound, concerned about the same thing, and I had corrected her as well. She went to check the photos from the ultrasound and came back and told us that basically what had happened was that the head nurse had gone to correct the original note where someone had written that Wiggles was breech, and instead of overwriting the first note in the system, the computer had basically duplicated it. All is well, and I've been given the "go-ahead" to start labor whenever I like.

Hahahahahaha!

Also, yesterday was mine and hubs' second wedding anniversary. Hooray! After the appointment, we decided to use a gift card very kindly given to hubs for his birthday my my ex's sister (have I mentioned that it's really nice to be able to get along?) to Denny's, and then headed to Barnes & Noble to dig up hubs' second anniversary present. Dinner was good! Hubs got a maple bacon sundae. He says it wasn't BAD, per se, but that he wouldn't order it again. I think it was that the bacon was hickory smoked instead of just plain bacon that killed it. Ah well. We did get a gift certificate to my favorite restaurant, but the logistics of it weren't going to work out with the child care situation, hence opting for Denny's. Good thing, too. I got violently ill on the way to pick her up. Sometimes Princess Wiggle-Worm doesn't like it when I eat, so she squashes my stomach and forces everything back out. I'll be glad when that's over with. Woo.

Lazy Surrogate!

Wow, I suck at keeping this thing caught up.

As of today, I am 36 weeks along (read: nine months). Human pregnancies are actually 40 weeks (ten months), but since most women don't realize they're pregnant during the first month, the average lay-person calls it a nine-month process.

Monday one of my closest friends and I went up to the big hospital for my weekly check-up. The doctor there (last name HAMMER! How badass is that?!) confirmed that Princess Wiggle-Worm is indeed head-down and seems to be posterior-facing, which is good. I'm measuring exactly where I should be for dates, Wiggle-Worm's heartbeat is very healthy and I'm already between two and three centimeters dilated.

Had some very intense Braxton-Hicks contractions last night, but a glass of water and some relaxing on my left side helped. Only four weeks to go and I can sleep on my tummy again! WOO HOO!!!

Wiggle-Worm on the Big Screen

Drove through all kinds of yuck last night to get to our ultrasound appointment at 6:15. Princess Wiggle-Worm is in the 35th percentile for growth. This is good; the doctor said that anything between 15 and 80 is normal and healthy. She also suggested that the baby may very well rival my munchkin in birth weight. Munchkin-girl was 8lbs, 10oz with a 13.5 inch head. Eep! Oh well. I did it once vaginally; I can do it again.

My IF seemed to be a bit calmer after our appointment than usual; but I'm sure he'll find something else to worry about before long. Poor guy.

Fun and Games

Eep! My friend Heather has tagged me to post seven things about myself. I'm not sure if these are supposed to be little-known facts or what, but I'll try to make them at least a little bit interesting, nonetheless.

1.) I am a die-hard role-playing geek. Dungeons and Dragons? Yes please! Vampire the Masquerade, Werewolf the Apocalypse (really anything having to do with White Wolf's World of Darkness)? Absolutely! Feng Shui? Deadlands? Call of Cthulhu? Oh yeah! I've even gone so far as to help create a system for playing Mutants, which wound up being fairly popular at college -wink to Heather and Ende, here- And yes, I also do bulletin-board RP online.
In fact, that's how I met hubs. I was running said Mutants game on an RP website and he joined the game. I IM'ed him one day to ask a question and well, to make a long story short we became good friends, and things went very well from there.

2.) As has surely become clear to all my readers by now, I am female. Yet I do not share the female fondness for chocolate. Once in a while I will desire it, generally in moderate amounts, but it does not entice me as it does my fellow ladies. I prefer fruity and salty foods.

3.) Despite my fondness for drawing, inking and coloring, I have not done any of the above in almost three years. I just can't find the inspiration and the few times I have *found* the inspiration, my hands refused to put on paper what my thinkmeats told it to.

4.) I have my own strange vocabulary (as demonstrated above). In fact, I have my own strange everything. Not everyone gets to see it; I am proficient at behaving if I have to, but I thrive on silliness.

5.) Until hubs, I was never engaged. I had proposals, but I couldn't honestly see myself happy with any of the proposers for the rest of my life.

6.) I love to be touched. And hugged. And snuggled.

7.) There is only one cat to which I have not found myself allergic. He belongs to my stepdad and lives in my house.

Princesses

Princess Wiggle-Worm is active, and... active, and... active. Her kicks and hiccups are almost palpable from the outside now, which amuses my own little Princess to no end.

And to THAT end, I thought I might write a little about my Pixie Princess. My bold, brassy, independent-thinking monkey-girl. (Sorry, Fianna; when you see a good idea, steal it and RUUUUUN!) Tonight was her very first public art show. Yes, it was a school function, but the artwork is not being displayed at the school; it's being displayed in the local library. There was even live harp music and food! She says it wasn't the piece SHE would have chosen to mount and display, but she was a featured artist nonetheless.

She's also been cast as an Oompa Loompa in her very first community theater production of Willy Wonka. She was very gracious in accepting this role, as she had of course initially auditioned for the parts of Veruca Salt and Violet Beauregard. But considering that this was her first audition and she was woefully unprepared (her mother found out about it only the day before, and with no detail), the fact that she got a part speaks well of her.

Anyway... You know that curse that every mother throws at her children in fits of frustrated rage? "I hope you have children JUST! LIKE! YOU!" Well, my mother chose to make it more of a blessing. Consciously. She was very specific about her blessing, too. "I hope that when you have children, they have all of your best qualities and none of your flaws." What a lovely thing to say! However. I think she and I sometimes diverge where "best qualities" and "flaws" are defined.

My mother is a born-again Christian. This works well for her, and I am glad that her faith does her well. She values obedience and honesty and hard work and compassion and loyalty and conservative behavior and dress.

I am a pagan. I agree with my mother where honesty and hard work and compassion and loyalty are concerned. I also value independent thought, which often prevents immediate and unquestioning obedience. This is admittedly sometimes a pain in the proverbial tookus, but overall I think I would rather my daughter obey me because she sees the sense in what I am instructing her to do, than "just because I said so." And we often argue over the sense of the requests and demands I make of her. And being a child, she doesn't always see the reasons behind everything, but eventually... She will.

My Princess is bull-headed, like her parents (all three of us). She makes choices based on the information at hand and goes at them full-throttle. She's intelligent and compassionate and charming, which is most often used for good, but occasionally turns toward the egocentric.

My Princess is talented. She sings like a little angel; she loves to dance; she wants to be in theater; she loves to draw and paint and create. This, of course, leads me into realms of parental bliss. No, I don't always love her choices in music, but I don't suppose my parents loved listening to Nine Inch Nails or Garbage, either. The long and short of it is: I. Hate. Sports. I will watch them as a good, supportive mother should, if I have to. But I am EVER so thankful that I don't have to. Take me to art shows, theater productions, dance recitals, concerts; I will watch and look and clap and whistle and throw roses with all the enthusiasm in my heart.

My Princess is articulate. As parents, her father and stepfather and I have made it a point never to talk down to any child. If we use a five-dollar word, we want our Princess to ask what it means. To learn, always. To speak at a level that matches her intelligence. And she has risen to the challenge magnificently.

My Princess is a culinary adventurist. Most ten-year-olds stick to a chicken-nugget, hot dog, hamburger, macaroni-and-cheese diet. You know, "kid foods." My Princess likes sushi and broccoli (most veggies, really) and steaks and soups and pretty much everything other kids refuse to eat. When we go out for subs, she gets more veggies on hers than the hubs or I do.

My Princess is a million things that make me proud, a thousand things that make me happy and a handful of things that drive me nuts, but in truth, it's probably a good thing she keeps me on my toes anyway.

Completely Unrelated

I'm in a funk. I got two phone calls the other day from The University of Phoenix and The University of Chicago, regarding inquiries I had made into their nursing degree programs. Both informed me that I am nowhere near being eligible for their nursing programs, as they only offer RN-to-Bachelors of Science in Nursing programs. So I looked around for information on how to get my RN. Basically I'd have to start out by taking a course to get certified as an LNA (licensed nursing assistant). Then I'd have to work as an LNA for a while. After that, I could take two years' worth of college courses to become an LPN (licensed practical nurse), do more practicum, then take the NCLEX-RN (test to become a registered nurse), do some more practicum, THEN and ONLY then could I go to school for an additional four years of college to get my BSN.

Or I could go back to an in-state college and rack up another $60,000+ in college loans, on top of what hubs and I owe for HIS college education. Sorry folks, can't afford to do that. Even if hubs hadn't just finished his degree, I still couldn't afford to quit my job to go back to school full time.

So then I thought, well my ultimate goal was to be a midwife, right? So I looked up direct-entry midwifery laws by state, and there aren't very many states in the US that have outright outlawed direct-entry midwives. "Excellent!" I thought. "I could just go to midwifery school! There's one within an hour's drive of my house!" But oh yeah; there's that pesky *tuition* thing. Sure, my state's student assistance corporation offers grants to some students who attend in-state schools, but I'm not eligible for any of them because I make too much money. Hooray for circular arguments. I can't quit my job because we have bills and college loans to pay off, but no one takes bills and spouse's loans into consideration when reviewing the other spouse's financial situation for aid.

In addition, there are some other issues that have arisen with other people with whom I associate. The issues are old and, I thought, dealt with. Apparently not. So I can do no right, and am not a woman of whom anyone can be proud.

*Please note: This is not MY opinion of myself. This is someone else's attitude toward me. I realize that I have accomplished a good deal in my life thus far, and have hopefully had some positive impact on a few people at least.
Regardless, it hurts to know that someone who I thought WAS proud of me is not only *NOT* proud of me, but is angry at me for something for which I've made reparations.

There are other things dragging me down, but I am not at liberty to rant about them at current, as they do not directly involve me.

Princess Wiggle-Worm

Is all kinds of wiggly. My I.F. isn't going to name her until she's born, and since it's not my place to give her a proper name, I have dubbed her "Princess Wiggle-Worm." My I.F. finds this amusing, so perhaps it will even stick! Wouldn't that be hilarious?

I developed a birth plan last week, and showed it to my I.F. for his approval. We're going to go over it in more detail later on, but for now it sounds as if he's alright with most of it.

Oh! So the second round of plague turned out to be a systemic allergic reaction to the erythromycin I was administered by my regular doctor. Was it my regular doctor who discovered this? Nope. It was the obstetrician. I went to his office the Friday following our ultrasound looking like I had lost a boxing match with a kangaroo. Fun. Anyway, it's mostly cleared up now, but I have now developed two blocked lubrication ducts in my right eye. I suspect this may have something to do with the fact that I had to spread vaseline around my eyes while I was recovering from the allergic attack, so that the skin around my eyes wouldn't crack and bleed. That was fun. Hopefully these will resolve themselves soon and it will be life as usual again.

Hopefully.

Illness and Better News

Last Wednesday night I went to see the doctor for itchy, puffy eyes. Of course, I thought that it was conjunctivitis (pink eye), so the NP gave me a prescription for erythromycin to treat it. On the way home I was suddenly attacked by several different forms of The Plague. The battle was short but hard-fought. I tried to summon my immune system to provide backup, but it was being kept busy in the general area of my navel, protecting the little bun in my oven. And so my defenses fell and The Plague took over. For five. Freaking. Days. Over the course of these five days, what was left to me of my Immuno-Forces was able to slowly beat back The Plague, with the help of Robitussin DM, Vicks Vapo-Rub, Sleep, My Mum, My Hubs and My Munchkin. I'm still a little plague-ridden, but it's on the run. During the course of this epic battle, I discovered that the erythromycin was not fixing my eye problem. So I sent Hubs out to contract with the forces of Claritin, to see if that might help, and fired the eye goop. This helped. A visit to the doctor again last night provided an extra antihistamine and a prognosis of "stop using the blanket your mother-in-law gave you, as it seems to be the only variable since you left home." My eyes are currently looking like they're about 90 years old, but at least I can see through them now!

Today I got to go to the big hospital for the final ultrasound! This was the anatomical one where they check to make sure the baby has all its bits and that those bits are working as they should. It's also the one where they can tell what the baby's sex is! HUZZAH! Thankfully, my I.F. wanted to have this information, so I can now safely tell all that IT'S A GIRL!!! The doctor said she's in perfect condition, is exactly the right size for her date (which as of today is 18.6 weeks), and all her bits are working perfectly. (He said "perfect" a lot.) This means that the chances of chromosomal abnormalities is down to no more than 1%, which was a relief to I.F. He was more worried about that than finding out the baby's gender. He didn't really mind which sex the baby was, just so long as she was healthy.

Don't bother asking me about names for the baby. She will be named after she's born.

P.S. Hubs and I are thinking we'll start trying to get pregnant for ourselves around December, 2011-January, 2012, barring other people's needs (YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!) or unforeseen circumstances.