Flail, Tempest! Flail!

Tempest is awake. And pissed. Or hyper. I'm not sure which, but no part of my abdomen is safe from his fury. Thankfully he's still small enough that it's just an odd feeling - I'm grateful that as he grows, the amount of space he'll have to build momentum will shrink; otherwise I might wind up with a broken rib or six.

I'm on my fifth straight work day out in the field; in a different district every day. The upside is that I get to go home every night. The downside is that I work 11 or 12 hour days, and it's seriously wearing me down. Thankfully tomorrow is the last one for this week, and then I only have one more until the end of April. This is not to say I won't still have plenty of work to do, but I'll be able to do it in the office, in 8-hour work days.

Anyway, our next OB appointment is a week from today. I don't think there's going to be much to report, but it's a visit.

I.F. called me last week. He said he read the articles that the ultrasound doctor mentioned at our last visit, and by the sounds of it, he agrees that there isn't enough evidence, and too small a sample size to really be able to conclude anything about a dangling choroid plexus. I'm glad, too. He works full time and is a dad to a toddler to boot; he doesn't need extra stress.

I guess that's my rant for now. I'm only writing because I need to look busy. I work too fast for my own good, sometimes.

Big, Round Thoughts

As Tempest repeatedly kicks the iPad, I am forced to finally recognize that I am now officially bulbous. Not "oh my god, how much longer" bulbous, but my tummy is noticeably round and sticks out past my not-inconsiderable chest. I can't use it as a dinner table yet, but I am resting my wrists on it as I type, and the iPad is resting on it, leaning against my thighs.

It is becoming a strain to bend down to pull on my socks or tie my sneakers. I am determined, however, to continue to prove to my fellow preggosaurs that it can be done without assistance right up through delivery day. I did it with Pooka and WiggleWorm; I will do it with Tempest. I do not need Hubs to do my shoes for me. I will admit that I need him to help me reach high shelves that I can normally get at without a belly, but since the bulbous mass does get in the way, it limits my reach.

I had a chat with my grandmother earlier today that got me thinking. She told me, when Pooka and I arrived, that she didn't want me doing a bunch of housework when I got here. I asked her later on if she had done much sitting around when she was pregnant in her thirties. Of course she didn't. She was a registered nurse who worked nights at her local hospital and tended the kids before and after school when she wasn't at work. So why, when I am 33 and pregnant, should I do any differently? (Little does she know that I tend to do more than she thinks I do while she and Grampy are away at church on Saturday evenings. Muahahaha!) I have to wonder where this attitude of "sit and rest" came from. My OB when I was pregnant with Pooka said to maintain my pre-pregnancy activity level throughout the gestational period. Dr. Badass seems to agree, so long as the pregnancy remains low-risk. It's a strange attitude that has pervaded the layperson's culture.

Anyway: I made marinated lamb chops for dinner tonight. I have come to the conclusion that wrapping individual pieces of meat in aluminum foil with a little bit of marinade or oil, then baking for 30-40 minutes at 450 degrees, is the best way to cook meat... EVER. It comes out moist and juicy and is a hundred times easier than trying to watch it in a pan on the stove. We also had steamed asparagus and potato and cheddar pierogi. The grandparents approved. I win.

Bullying: Unrelated Rant

"Yeah I wish I’d been, I wish I’d been a teen, teen idle

Wish I’d been a prom queen, fighting for the title

Instead of being sixteen and burning up a bible

Feeling super, super (super!) suicidal

The wasted years, the wasted youth

The pretty lies, the ugly truth

And the day has come where I have died

Only to find I’ve come alive"

Pooka has been listening to Marina & The Diamonds a lot lately. My sense of the songs is that they’re making fun of modern society and trying to slap listeners around a little. Pooka’s favorite song at the moment appears to be “Teen Idle” (See the lyrics above.) And while I feel like the majority of the song is bashing those kids in high school who were the stereotypical definition of popular, I think the chorus rings true for some kids, including Pooka herself. Even I found myself identifying.

I joke with my daughter about how “I was a nerd back before it was cool,” but the truth is, it’s still not actually cool to be a nerd. The majority of kids these days may enjoy Dr. Who or Big Bang Theory, but the truth is: If you’re not like everyone else, you’re gonna get it. Pooka got thrown into a bank of lockers yesterday by some of the more athletic boys in her class. She likes cosplay and anime and isn’t afraid to show her classmates that yes, she does in fact really like Spiderman. She’s been bullied at school and still tries like hell to come home with her head held high, which is more than I was able to say at her age.

It wasn’t much different for me in elementary and middle school: The same school system through which my Pooka is journeying now. Bathroom stall doors were kicked open so I’d get hit in the face; other (sometimes younger) kids would push me around and knock me off play structures; girls would spit and put glue in my long hair – all because I was different, and outspoken about it. It was awful. And despite all the new bullying laws being put in place in the US right now, it’s not making a damned bit of difference.

Things got a little better in high school, but I was still labeled a “nerd” and my friends and I were shoved off into a corner of the cafeteria at lunch to be ignored by the popular kids. We were still teased in class and laughed at, but at least by then we had each other.

I try to be mature about what’s past, but I must admit a little bitterness for some things here and there. I’ve run into old classmates since graduation who made it clear that they thought little of me in school and who still think me little more than dorky white trash because I had my daughter at a young age. And I get a sense of vengeful satisfaction when I tell them that I am in fact a professional, working for the state, and that I do other things that make a difference in the world, while they sit back and stroke their overweening egos.

But the truth is: Even those folks who look down on me because we weren’t friends as kids, are doing the best they can. Some of them have remarkable, marketable talents. Others are exceptionally well-educated. And some people have approached me since school to tell me that they thought *I* was exceptional. What a surprise that can be after years of being teased and bullied!

Pooka:

I know it doesn’t help to hear that I learned later on that people actually did think well of me, but were too wrapped up in their own lives to stop other kids from bullying; or were intimidated by me; or sometimes may even have been jealous of me. But you’ll hear it someday too. In the meantime, keep your head held high; know that you are magnificent; and don’t let childish behavior get you down. I’ll always be here for you; and so will Daddy and the rest of your very, very big family.

Love,

Mom  

No CMV. A Bit Of Strangeness, Though

Well today seems to be about hurrying up to wait, so while I’ve got nothing to do, I may as well blog a little.

I called The Big Hospital yesterday afternoon to see if my blood work had come back yet on the cytomegalovirus test. It had, and showed no signs of CMV whatsoever. We didn’t figure it would, but it’s always better to be safe than sorry where someone else’s baby is concerned. I emailed I.F. to tell him, but haven’t heard back yet. I dunno how he stays sane, as busy as he is.

I ran into an old neighbor at the grocery store yesterday; what a surreal encounter. I told her I was pregnant, and she asked if she could touch my belly. I thought her request was reasonable, and she was polite about it, so I said sure. The next thing I knew, she was on her knees in front of me as we stood in front of the deli counter, and had her ear and cheek pressed against my stomach. People were staring; it was really bizarre. She said there was something magnetic and special about Tempest, but to be careful of salt in my last trimester. I’m known to swell up like a balloon in the last half of the third trimester, but she’s never seen me pregnant, so it was odd to hear her say that. We’ll see, but I generally try to be mindful of sodium intake anyway.

I also ran into Wifey, which was a nice surprise, and got to chat with her a little bit about what’s going on with her and what her plans were for the rest of the week. And I got hugs, which are ALWAYS good.

I was kind of an idiot though, and bought about $100 in groceries, but had decided to get some exercise, so I had to bring it all back home on foot. This after making dinner and doing the dishes. Then I made lunches for today, did more dishes; prepped salad for Hubs, put away the groceries and took out the trash. Not bad for a day’s work, especially if you include a full day of working at my job.

It's A...

Ladies and Gents, the gender portion of the betting pool is closed. Most of you who declared wagers were correct. And so was I.

The ultrasound doctor who came in to chat with me and I.F. assured us that physically, Tempest is in fabulous condition. He said that the placenta is attached way up at the top of my uterus, which is good. The umbilical cord is attached against the wall of the uterus, which isn’t the best scenario, but it’s not the worst, either. It just means that I’ll have to have monthly ultrasounds to monitor the baby’s growth, starting at week 28. Basically they’ll make sure that he’s getting enough nutrients through his umbilical cord.

The other thing is that the choroid plexus in the first and second ventricles in Tempest’s brain are dangling. It’s only a 3-3.5mm dangle, which the doctor is certain means nothing at all, because it’s not significantly beyond normal range. However, there are two papers published by the obstetrical community which suggest that the situation is worse than the ultrasound doctor and his fellows have ever seen in their practice. (The ultrasound doctor has been in practice outside fellowship for 17+ years.) In other words, these two papers say it’s a “thing” when it’s really not a “thing.” But I.F. is worried anyway, as he tends to be.

I’m also being tested for cytomegalovirus (CMV). The ultrasound doctor said he’s only seen congenital CMV once in his 17 years of obstetrical practice, but I.F. likes to err on the side of caution, and since all it meant was a quick blood drawing, I didn’t see a need to argue. I also learned that CMV is pretty harmless to adults, but it can affect babies in utero and cause neurological defects. I’m not going to mention how it manifests in a pregnant woman, because it’s so rare that it’s not worth getting other preggosauruses nervous.

A Rocky Start to March

My sweet mother-in-law called me last night to check up on everybody, and said she hadn’t been getting as much information from my Facebook updates, so she wanted to make sure she knew what was going on, and to let us know she loves us. (I love you, Mom.) I figured I’d just post another blog entry, so I don’t have to keep repeating myself. Ha!

As I said in my last post: Tuesday, around 1:30 am I woke up to go to the bathroom and had some pain in my right “flank.” It wasn’t awful, so I thought maybe I had just slept funny. I stretched a bit and went back to bed. Between 1:30 am and 4:00 am it got worse and worse. I threw up; got the shakes and was in worse pain than I think I’d ever felt before. I woke Hubs up and he took me to the local hospital’s ER. They gave me low doses of Dilaudid (I can’t have Toradol because I’m pregnant) but it only helped for maybe twenty minutes and then the pain came back in force. I’ve never felt anything like it. Anyway, they admitted me at some point earlyish on Tuesday morning after doing an ultrasound on my kidneys.

The nurses found some crystalline sort of sediment in the samples they took, and sent it off to the lab. The doctor came back a little later that day and told me that the sediment was part of a kidney stone. At that point, I was still begging for Dilaudid on the hour, as prescribed. One of the night nurses on Tuesday night decided to get clearance from the doctor to give me Percocet every four hours, and Dilaudid on the hour as needed. This helped immensely. The Dilaudid didn’t completely kill the pain on its own; it just dulled it some. Combined with the Percocet, I was sleepy and pain-free.  By Wednesday afternoon, things seemed to be over, so I was sent home.

Except that Wednesday night my kidney started feeling tender again. By the middle of the day on Thursday I had to leave work because it was just that uncomfortable. I got an appointment at my primary care physician (PCP)’s office for that afternoon and told them that it felt like I had a kidney infection; as the pain was no longer sharp, but felt a lot like the pain I had when I was pregnant with Pooka and got… You guessed it… A kidney infection. They took another sample and tested it for blood, which they said was still present, gave me prescriptions for Percocet and Amoxicillin just in case, and had me deliver the rest of the sample to the local hospital after my appointment.

Friday I wasn’t feeling much better, so I stayed home from work. My PCP told me to call my obstetrician (OB) up at the Big Hospital and update them. She also told me to find out whether or not they wanted me to go up there if things got worse, or go back to the local ER. So I called the obstetrician. The nurses and Dr. Badass wanted me to go up to be checked out, but I was reticent because I was still waiting for the preliminary results from my UA culture. When I finally did hear from the local OB who treated me on Wednesday, I told him that I had passed a stone (about the size of a Nerd – you know, the candy) on Thursday night, and he immediately proceeded to tell me that the crystalline sediment they found was not in fact part of the stone, and so I either hadn’t passed it yet, or we had missed it. I reiterated that I had passed a stone and caught it the night before and was summarily ignored.

Once that was over, I called my OB at the Big Hospital and they told me to come in. Except that Pooka had made arrangements for a friend to come over from more than half an hour away, in the opposite direction from the Big Hospital. Fortunately, the friend’s mom was on her way back through from a business meeting, and she agreed to take the munchkins for the night.

We made our way up to the Big Hospital where some more very nice nurses showed us into what I can only assume was the “stress test” room (where they give the mother/carrier a ton of sugary liquid and then monitor the baby for half an hour; except it always takes longer than that because when you get a fetus all sugared up, it isn’t going to stay in one place for any length of time, and therefore it’s hard to get any consistent readings on heart rate.) They monitored Tempest’s heart rate for a couple minutes and declared it good. Then the doctor came in and grilled me, since the records from the local OB’s weren’t quite complete I guess. He and the nurses took a look at the stone I passed and declared it “HUGE.” I had no basis for comparison, so I took their word for it.

Not much information was gathered on Friday, but they did take a UA sample and sent me home with orders to keep taking the Amoxicillin, and not to be afraid to take the Percocets if I’m in pain.

Good thing the Big Hospital took a sample, because the local one only tested far enough for the doctors to be able to say, “Yes; you have an infection. But we don’t know where it is or how bad it is.” Dr. Badass called me on Saturday to tell me this, and let me know that the sample being cultured up in the Queen City would be ready on Sunday (yesterday) and that she’d call me if she thought I needed anything more drastic than the ten-day course of antibiotics I’m on now.

I’m on the mend; the pain is growing progressively less and less, and my friends and my little family have been extremely thoughtful and patient with me. My Uncle up in the Queen City and his lovely bride were kind enough to take my weekend with Grammie and Grampy, and another Uncle who stayed in his hometown and his youngest son showed up on Sunday to take on the not-inconsiderable task of shoveling snow off the roof of Gram & Gramp’s house for them. So to them especially I say: Thank you!

I.F. has been very sweet and attentive throughout this; checking up on me daily. In the meantime, his little Tempest is as wiggly as its sister, so we know it’s still growing. And we’ll find out the sex on Thursday morning.

Here’s to March being better than February, ladies and gents! Cheers!