Snuggle Nest

Remember when I wrote about sharing a family bed with Zac? Well that problem just cleared itself up when one day my baby bird left the nest and decided it was more fun to sleep in his room and listen to books on CD in the dark. That left the nest open for hoarding invaders. KGII was sleeping in my nursery on a blow-up bed until his complaints about his back got too loud for me to drown out with the clacking of my laptop computer. I also had a very, very urgent need to nest and experience the joy of my pregnancy, which involved evicting him from the room dedicated to all things baby. Eventually in regards to the bed, KGII and I came to a "don't touch me and you can sleep on half of the bed" kind of detente. As my pregnancy progressed, we got to, "Ok, you can spoon me and feel the baby move, then move back over to your side, and make sure your foot doesn't touch me." It's a small understatement to say I don't like to be touched while I'm sleeping. With Zac, I erected a pillow fort to separate our sides of the bed. It helps that I have a king size bed the size of Arizona and Zac really likes to sleep on pillows perpendicular to the head board.

So, I had a rude awakening to co-parenting. I wanted this post to be up on my blog before I write my next post so when I say things with KGII are "complicated" it sounds like something more serious than a vague Facebook status.

Ben has been in the NICU for 15 days, with Monday being Day 16. In one of the early days, when I was still in a lot of pain from the emergency C-section and had only recently relearned the skill of standing on my own, KGII had a rush of male hormones while holding our child. Since this is my first go-around with a male partner (or any partner, of any sex), I didn't know that bonding could be such a physical experience for someone who didn't gestate a child. He felt a surge of pride, joy, and the feeling that our child was the most gorgeous human being that has ever graced this planet. He said he was having chest pains because he was so happy. I just kind of pitched my head to the side, squinted my eyes, and said, "Huh. That's good. Yes, he is very beautiful. You realize you're acting crazy, right?"

For some reason or another, we ended up at Babies R Us immediately following the hospital. It was like taking a hemophiliac to a blood bank. He was putty in the baby industry's hands and wanted to show his love for Ben with his wallet, which I can appreciate. I've been feeling like for at least four months. He had seen this product at another baby store and decided he needed and yearned for a snuggle nest. The snuggle nest is best explained via photograph.

This has been in a box for 12 days now, only making an appearance tonight since Ben has a glancing chance of being discharged from NICU tomorrow. Tonight is "practice". If that looks like a rush basket that Moses floated down the river in, you would be correct, except this one is plastic and covered with fabric and light padding. It also cost $60 and can only be used from 0-4 months. It has a light and musically sounds, including a beating heart beat, which is a little creepy for a product that hangs out in an adult bed. The snuggle nest also comes with its own requirements of co-parents: we are never allowed to let adult bedding touch it or cover it and each adult has to commit to only sleeping with one pillow and, I assume, not pushing the pillow up to sleep on your stomach with your head smashed against the flat sheet.

Now let's just take a step back. I'm not speaking for all of femininity here, but I'm guessing that there is no way in Hell most second time Moms would pay $60 bucks for something you can only use for 4 months. Plus, I'm not sure how I got talked into having my child that close to my head (I'm the white pillow). KGII thought it would be all snuggly and close and so! super! convenient! for me to breast feed. I think I was just excited that he was excited because I let him buy it. If you're thinking, "If he's so excited by it, he should buy a bed and then he can share half of it with an overpriced baby-holding basket" and then we'd be thinking the same thing. We're working on converting a formal living room to a bed room and it's slow going, what with me making KGII stop every 40 minutes and download Netflix and show me how to use the Wii. He also sometimes gets called into service and construct Legos with Zac and bring me water. We also go to the hospital 2-3 times a day and there are just projects that get shunted to the side when a kid comes six weeks early.

On the upside, there is no way I can get an errant elbow to the face with this thing in between us. On the downside, Ben snores...and hiccups...and sighs...and I'm not sure how I'm ever going to sleep again.

Hold me. On better thought, just stay on your side of Arizona/New Mexico border and I'll hang out near Nevada and maybe one day we can road trip to California. They clearly don't make beds big enough for this kind of situation.

The Wall

If at the end of this post, you want to bitch slap me, I'd be ok with that. I just want to put that out there at the beginning. I understand that babies die and women die in childbirth and people who are born with no legs and no arms go on to become motivational speakers. I acknowledge that I'm not made of the same kind of mettle as these people. I'm grateful that my child and I made it through an emergency situation with all body parts as intact as they can be after major abdominal surgery. My baby is alive and getting better, even when he takes two steps forward and one step backwards.

Right now, I'm sitting on the couch wondering how I'm going to feed myself if KGII doesn't come home from work soon. I'm too tired to contemplate going to the fridge and actually preparing food for myself. It's not like I'm running extreme marathons in my spare time or, I don't know, going to work every day. No, none of that is going on. Here is what is going on:

I usually wake up twice a night to pump. Right around 1am and 4am. I'm told that I can carry on legitimate conversations at these times of which I'll have no recollection I don't wake up to martyr myself on the alter of breastfeeding. I wake up because my boobs make me. They're hard to ignore, even when I sleep on my side. I've also been waking up multiple times a night for the last seven months. Even extreme fatigue can't seem to shake that habit.

I get up for good around 5:30am and do the dishes or if I'm feeling really ambitious or particularly sad, I'll try and make Ben's 5am feeding at the hospital. I have to be home by 6:40am to wake Zac up and force his reluctant seven year-old ass to get ready to go to school. I literally kick him out the door to catch the bus by 7:20am. Sometimes I'll go to Ben's 8am feeding because he's been inadvertently admitted to Baby Boot Camp where they feed kids every 3 hours, regardless of preference, hunger, or consciousness. I try to find something to do outside the house until his 11am feeding. Then I run errands. Yesterday I tried to take a nap from 2-3:30pm, but I ended up having crazy hallucinations, except my eyes were closed and I wasn't asleep. Is there even a word for that? Twilight nightmares? Awake terrors? Someone should really come up with a word for that. Let's just blame our good friend Vicadin for that.

It's 7pm and I'm wondering if it's too early to go to bed, except Zac doesn't go to sleep until 8:30pm and I haven't eaten dinner. I'm apparently still anemic from the blood loss at Ben's birth, even though I take prenatal vitamins and iron supplements. I've lost 20lbs, but I still look like I'm 3-4 months pregnant and well-meaning people (Bless their heart!) keep asking me when the baby is due. Then I cry. Repeat 2-3 times a day.

This is what a wall feels like. I was wondering what parenting a new born would be like. I never expected that I would be parenting from the NICU. Now I know. It feels just like ramming your head, repeatedly, into a wall and waiting for someone to come pick you up and feed you. Day 11 -  you can suck my ass.

Day 10 (Boobs)

In honor of this post, I thought I'd write about my boobs, since my world seems to revolve around them. I have a lot to write about with my recovery and Ben being in the NICU for ten days and counting, but I have to honor my reality that some things are still too painful to write/talk about and Zac doesn't need to have Mama hunched over a laptop computer sobbing...again...ok three times this week. Let's just say that my coping skills are being stressed in ways that I couldn't imagine before Ben's birth.

But my boobs...man, boobs. It's fun to write, but not fun to live with. I was worried my milk wouldn't come in because Ben came early in an emergency situation, but bodies are smart. A lot smarter than we give them credit for. With Zac, my milk came in on Day 3 while sitting in a chair waiting for pain medication at CVS. With Ben, my milk came in on Day 4, while leaving Red Lobster. It's funny that I can know the exact moment my boobs go from aesthetic to utilitarian. It's also incredibly painful to have your boobs suddenly fill up with milk and swell to a size that you didn't think was humanly possible.

I've been having a huge problem with engorgement over the past six days. My breasts get so rock hard and painful that I can barely move. Since I didn't end up at the hospital where I had all my prenatal care, my Maternal and Fetal Psychiatrist doesn't have privileges at the regional hospital where I delivered and where Ben is staying. The NICU has decided that the medications I'm on (and was on my entire pregnancy) are being transmitted through my breast milk and are too dangerous for Ben. So, I've been pumping and freezing my milk. And I pump. And pump. And I take hot showers and drip onto the bath mat and put cold cabbage leaves in my bra until I start to smell and then I pump some more. I can't even tell you how much milk I have in my freezer. Enough to run a small infant daycare center.

Pumping with no baby in sight is a soulless enterprise though. I've been doing it for ten days now (I started in the hospital). I try looking at pictures of Ben while I'm doing it and I even bought a hands free pumping bra so I can read or check Facebook, but I still know that I'm hooking myself up to a small machine that pumps milk out of my breasts. My breasts are so sensitive now that I can track time by them. I know when it's been two, three, or four hours since my last pump. It's just hard. Pumping with Zac was always something I did at work to continue him on breast milk while he was at daycare. Right now, I just feel like I'm biding time until I can get Ben home and I pray that he'll go back on the breast after weeks on a small Similac bottle.

I went to the ER on Sunday when my blood pressure spiked and I had a head ache. I was there for close to five hours with an IV that didn't work (that's another story) but by the time I got home, it had been 12 hours since I had pumped. When the nurses and doctors asked me about my pain level, I had to ask them which pain they were referring to: my head? my uterus? my incision? or my breasts?  KGII drove me home at 1am and I just wanted to go to bed, but I knew my breasts would be so full and hard that I wouldn't be able to go to sleep. I started to cry on the short ride home and told him that I didn't know if I was strong enough to pump long enough to wait for Ben's release from the hospital. I don't think he realized what he was saying (and I'm not always trying to paint him in a bad light on this blog) but he told me that I had to continue pumping so I would be ready when Ben came home. I realized at that moment that he and I had never had a conversation about breast feeding vs formula feeding. It was always assumed that I would breast feed because I was lucky enough to do it for eight months with Zac. This just feels so much harder, emotionally and physically. I was ready to give up that night. KGII got all my pump parts assembled and helped to my chair and I pumped, while crying. I wake up in the middle of the night needing to pump. It's the last thing I do at night and the first thing I do in the morning and I'm tired. I just want to sleep and my boobs won't let me.

It feels like pregnancy and motherhood is a process of acknowledging that my body has to come before my mind, at least for a while. You can't rationalize with huge boobs. You can't make a pump any more friendly. A uterus does what it wants to when it's carrying a child. So much is out of my control and some days it's easier than others to accept that.

Benjamin Jon - Part 2

...the on-call Ob Gyn agreed with the nurse's assessment that I needed an emergency C section, especially after she found out that I had C section with Zac. They had put an oxygen mask on me and started asking me 15,000 questions, which were difficult to answer through the mask and while contracting. KGII and my Mom pitched in where they could. At one point, when a nurse was using an electric razor to shave me and I was staring up into the lights I thought, "This is it. This is the worst case scenario that I've been fearing." I felt naked, exposed, and very vulnerable. I was in a lot of pain and could feel the blood continue coming out.

Within 45 minutes, they had rolled me back into the operating room. Getting my epidural was unbelievably painful, which is probably why they don't let partners in the room for that. I actually cried and I kept apologizing to the nurse that was holding me upright because I thought I was bleeding on her (I wasn't). The doctor told me later that she was so concerned about the situation that she went into surgery before the labs had come back on my blood. Basically, she went in blind. The epidural didn't take immediately. She tried to make a tentative cut but I started screaming. I was very scared about feeling the surgery after the horrible experience I had with Zac's surgery. The doctor said we needed to go immediately and get the baby out, so she called for general anesthesia. One nurse started attacking my throat, which was really scary, while they put something in my IV to knock me out. Apparently she was keeping me from aspirating because I had eaten at 5am and the surgery was at 7am.

By 7:26am, Benjamin Jon was in the world. The doctor told me later that my placenta had uprupted possibly up to 50% and by driving to Clear Lake ER rather than the hospital in Houston, I had probably saved Ben's life. KGII wasn't allowed in the OR because I was under general, but he saw the NICU team cleaning him up and snapped the first pictures of Ben's life. Ben still had blood in his mouth when KGII saw him

I woke up around 8am to KGII rubbing my arm, no longer dressed in scrubs, and my Mom in the room. My Dad came later with Zac to see me. I was back in the triage room in Labor and Delivery and my legs were completely numb. I couldn't move them at all and they tingled. That epidural finally kicked in. They put the massaging cuffs on my legs which alternated and helped quite a bit. Within two hours, I was able to barely move a little and the longer time went on the more mobility I got back. I was taken to an ante partum room where, yes, even though you would think that I was done bleeding, more blood was coming out (this time it was supposed to happen) and my incision was weeping. I had a hard time managing my pain that first day. It just felt like my epidural pump wasn't working so I had to wait for IV pain meds once every six hours and morphine, when all of my planets were aligned and the nurse felt like it.


My pain became more manageable as each day passed. I had two friends come and visit me on Day 3 after surgery and they were really surprised at how mobile I was, since I was out of bed. I think C sections are easier the second time around. Certainly not "easy" by any means and I don't want to downplay the fact that they are major abdominal surgery, but I'm recovering faster than I did 7.5 years ago.

Later on the first day, I was able to go and see Ben for the first time at his 8pm feeding. They were only giving him 10ccs of formula, but I got to give it to him.

This picture shows how small he actually is. He has an IV in his right arm and the board to immobilize his arm so he doesn't pull it out. For the first couple of days, his feet and hands were turning blue unless he was under the warmer. He has jaundice and what started out as one light has morphed into a three light showing tanning bed extravaganza. You can see his bed from two rows away because he glows. Right now, we can only hold him for 30 minutes every 12 hours, which is hard. My Mom and Dad can go in alone without KGII or me because we signed a Grandparents waiver. My Mom, on her 62nd birthday today (Happy Birthday, Mom!) went after work and they made a special exception and let her hold him for 10 minutes and change his diaper. She was so happy.

That's where we are. They had to put in a feeding tube in his nose because he was breathing too fast to drink from a bottle. They extended his antibiotics for a full seven days (he's on Day 4 now) to try and slow down his breathing. Like I said, they have three lights on him for jaundice. Otherwise, he seems like a healthy baby boy that needs to come home and be with KGII and me. Zac hasn't got to see him, other than in pictures, and he really wants to show how excited he is to have a little brother.

Here he is in he hospital with his "I'm a Big Brother" sticker on his shirt, sitting next to my Dad. Zac has offered to read books to Ben that we can record and play for him while he's in the hospital. I just went with my Dad to pick up Zac from school and then set up an art project for him while I cleaned and pumped. My Dad said that was the most activity he's seen from me in months and it's true, I am feeling better. I haven't puked since Ben came out and I've only taken Zofran two or three times.

I have new respect for NICU Moms and I desperately want my family, my whole family, to be under one roof. Now I just need to wait until Ben is healthy enough to come be with us.

Benjamin Jon - Part 1

Name: Benjamin Jon

Birth date: 2/9/13

Time: 7:26am

Weight: 6lb 13.5oz

Length: 17 inches

Gestational Age: 34w 3d

I realize that you don't chronicle a pregnancy for 34 weeks, take a break for a couple of weeks, then show back up with newborn pictures and say, "Surprise! Look at how cute my baby is!!" There is usually a step in the middle where the woman details out her birth story. I struggled with how much to write because there are parts of this story that are just graphic and if this week has taught me anything it's how messy labor, delivery, and post partum really are. So, consider this your warning. This story is not one of the pretty, cute stories that you see on TV. It's also written in two parts because of how long it is.

It all started with an ear ache. On Friday, February 1st I went in for my second gestational diabetes test. It's the one that takes three hours and usually ends with my puking. It was awful. I was miserable and felt really sick. To make matters worse, I was convinced that I had an ear infection or an abscess tooth. So after my test I went to see the dentist. There are things pregnancy books don't tell you about dentistry. Like that you need a permission slip from your Ob Gyn to actually be seen by a dentist. I procured one of those and then waited for an hour and a half in the dentist's office to be seen. The dentist poked hard on my back teeth, then on my front teeth, then had me open and shut my mouth and pronounced that I had pregnancy-induced TMJ (Note: I don't really). After securing another OK from my Ob Gyn, she prescribed anti inflammatory steroids and codeine. I got about three days into the steroid regime and my ear still hurt and I was feeling more and more sick. On Tuesday, February 5th. I stopped at what I thought was an urgent care facility (it was really a freestanding ER, but no one without access to my checking account would know that) so they could look at my ear. They thought I was ridiculous but since I had paid the ridiculous amount of money they asked, they humored me and looked in my ear. No infection. They thought maybe I had a sinus infection (because really, I wasn't leaving there without antibiotics) and prescribed a round of antibiotics for my sinuses.

By Wednesday, February 6th, I was just out and out sick. I couldn't drink enough water, I was going pee every 20 minutes, my glucose levels were high and I couldn't focus. All of my medically inclined friends said that I needed to go to the hospital for insulin because my blood sugar was too high. I had been diagnosed with gestational diabetes, but was told to just monitor my levels at home and wasn't given any insulin. Unfortunately, I was so sick that I had been fasting for 9 hours, but nevertheless, KGII and I went to the hospital in Houston. They put a fetal monitor and contraction monitor on me and tested my blood sugar. It was 94 (Not high at all, but slightly elevated for a fasting condition). But the nurses noticed that I was contracting every four minutes like clockwork. Contracting so much that they wouldn't let me go home. I noticed that the contractions started to hurt and KGII and I had never gone to a labor class because we assumed I'd have a C section. I told him to hold my hand and talk to me and he started talking about the stock market. I wish I was joking, but I'm not. I told him to stop talking then and just watch the contraction monitor and tell me when it was over. They gave me three doses of an intradermal medication to try and stop the contractions. It didn't help. It did make my heart race however. Finally they put in an IV and gave me two bags of saline and my contractions went from every four minutes to every seven then finally every nine minutes. They checked my cervix twice and I was high and closed. They sent me home, exhausted after five hours of non productive contractions.

On Saturday, February 9th, I woke up at 4am. I just felt uncomfortable, but that wasn't unusual for me in my third trimester (or really my first or second). KGII had stayed up all night watching movies and was awake. I took a bath and read the first book of the Game of Thrones series. I went back to bed, trying to sleep, and ultimately deciding to read more. At 6am, I stood up to go to the bathroom and felt a pop and a gush of fluid. I thought I had peed myself and hurried to the bathroom, except when I went to wipe my legs, all I saw was blood. More and more blood kept pouring out of me. Now I didn't watch my water being broken with Zac, but I knew this was not just a bloody show. I thought maybe that my water had broken and there was blood in there, but something was wrong. Unfortunately, you can't sit on the toilet in my bathroom and scream to someone in the living room, so I tried to stand up, but every time I stood up, more came out. I ended wrapping a towel around me and screaming to KGII that we had to go the hospital immediately. He called the hospital in Houston and waited for the on-call doctor to call us back. They asked how much blood we saw and there was really no way to describe it other than, "A LOT" so they told us to go to the closest Emergency Room.

So there are bloody towels everywhere, blood on the floor, I'm looking around for pads, but I don't have any, KGII comes back from the nursery brandishing three newborn diapers and tells me to put them in my pants and I do because I didn't have any better ideas. We pack the car with more towels for me to sit on and we take off. KGII is running red lights and going extremely fast. I'm screaming, "I can't make the blood stop, It just keeps coming out" and he's telling me it's goingt to be ok and not to worry, while speeding up. I call my Mom because I'm scared. We get to an intersection and we see the arms of a train crossing coming down and (this part has been supplied to me because I don't remember anything other than screaming), I turned to KGII and screamed, "Turn on the service road before the road! We can outrun the train if we get ahead of it". Apparently, KGII took my advice and we ended up driving parallel to the train. At some point, we see a small crossing and he brakes. I yell at him to go, he pauses for a moment, and then floors the gas pedal. The train starts honking and all I can see is the train light and I don't think we're going to make it, but we do and we end up in the ER five minutes later, somewhere around 6:30am.

They brought out a stretcher for me and take me to Labor and Delivery on the third floor. I'm still gushing blood. The nurses start working on me immediately, but I've started contracting again, this time it's every 1-2 minutes and it's extremely painful. They take off my clothes and I remember one nurse turning to a head nurse asking if she was going to check my cervix to see how dialated I was and the nurse looked at my bloody mess and said, "No, no I won't be checking her. Call the doctor for an emergency C-section". My Mom comes in and holds my hands through the contractions while we wait for the on-call Ob Gyn.

To be continued...

34w 2d (Facts of Life)

Just another day. I threw up three times today and just ate some great fried rice and Chinese noodles. "You mix the good and the bad and you take them both and then you have The Facts of Life! The Facts of Life!"

What's been so surprising this week is how tired I am. It's like I got hit with the fatigue stick. I skipped therapy yesterday and slept from 8am - 2pm and then again from 3pm-7pm and finally 10pm-5am this morning. So I wasn't kidding in my last post when I said I'm sleeping more than one woman should. I'm grateful for this time that I have where I can honor my body and trust my instincts. I'm not Zen enough to not be annoyed when I'm awake from 2am - 5am, but I'm just so thankful that KGII and my parents are in my life and are willing to support me and help me with Zac.

Speaking of Zac, he is now officially sleeping in his own bed. This has less to do with my amazing parenting and more to do with KGII rolling up his blow up bed to make room in the nursery. KGII and I reorganized furniture a couple of weeks ago and took the giant desk that was taking up most of the space in his room. We put in a new bookcase and moved out his old dresser and put it in Baby Bean's room. We also moved the sofa that was in my room into the living room in preparation for the baby shower on February 16th. Hopefully I can handle a party at my house better than I can handle a party at someone else's house.

I spent Superbowl Sunday with my friend, J, at her new place in Houston. My all measures, it was a great party. Good food, a lot to drink, great people, fun games, and football. Except I spent the evening on the couch contracting constantly and not speaking to anyone. Occasionally, one of J's friends would look over at me and say, "Are you ok? How's it going?" and I could only answer, "Um. Not ok, but thanks for asking." Right after Beyonce's fierce half time show, I crawled upstairs and laid on J's bed until I felt up for the 40 minute drive home. That very well may be the last party I attend without an escort until Baby Ben's arrival. Honestly, it was ridiculous how physically uncomfortable I was, even though I really wanted to be social and get to know the people at the party.

Sigh. Five more weeks, if everything goes the way it's supposed to. My first non-stress test didn't go very well. Baby Bean wasn't "perky" enough for the technician's liking. That means that his heart rate wasn't accelerating with every kick like it was supposed to. She kept me on the fetal monitors for the full 40 minutes and had me drink two bottles of cold water and even used some medical equivalent of a vibrator on my uterus to "wake him up". Then I went in for the ultrasound and Bean wasn't moving at all. I think he was tired from all that kicking earlier and maybe think they should lower their expectations of what kind of gymnastics a giant baby in a small uterus is capable of doing. Reluctantly, they let me leave the Maternal Fetal Care Center and go see my regular Ob Gyn. I go in once a week for monitoring and my Ob Gyn said that if they don't like how the baby is performing that they'll keep me for longer monitoring.

Every Thursday is an adventure from here on out. Right in between naps that is.

33w 5d (Reasons)

Here is a (not-so) complete list why I don't update my blog more:

• I've become enamored with other people's blogs. With my pregnancy-induced ADD, coupled with a suspicious lack of ADD medication in my system, I can handle very few novels right now. Novels are usually my staple reading of choice, but now I love nothing more to zone out to blogs read on my phone. I should point out that I've steadfastly refused to adopt any kind of electronic device for reading novels, preferring the heady weight and smell of paper (until a notable encounter with an 850 page Tom Clancy hard back almost gave me carpals). I love that I carry my phone everywhere with me and there are my blogs. My favorite activity is to find a blog and read through every post in the archive, starting in reverse chronological order. The more entries the better. I'll post a blog list soon of blogs that I've read.

• It's frankly annoying to have every third blog post talking about depression/mental illness/ or vomit. I don't like it in the blogs I read, yet for this to be a factual account of my pregnancy, I would have to include sentences like, "I only vomitted twice today, but I took three doses of Zofran and fell asleep at 8pm". Considering that the pukefest started around Week 5, no one wants to read about puking at Week 33. (If you do, message me on facebook or send me an email and I'll hook you up).

• I beat the system. My HMO finally approved me for short term disability (oddly enough, for medical disability this time, instead of behavorial health). I'm sure it had something to do with the 49 pages of hospital records I sent them. In my defense, I didn't even realize I was sending that many pages since they were two-sided, but oh well. At first the Man only approved me from November 2 - January 15th, leaving me in limbo as to whether or not I would actually get paid on January 31st (I did). I got a voice mail today that they have subsequently approved my case through February 25th, but reminded me that since I was due in mid-March that I would need all four providers to submit follow-up clinicals (Whee!!)

• I go to a lot of therapy. I have yet to make it all four days to therapy, but the place where I go is about 50 minutes away and I'm there for 2.5 hours, then I drive home 50 minutes. I usually try to squeeze in a nap before Zac gets home from school and then I'm tired again by 8pm. Repeat daily. On Thursdays, my day off from therapy, I've scheduled all my ultrasounds, Maternal and Fetal Pscyhiatrist visits, and non-stress tests. One big medical day that also tires me out. This Mama gets tired easily.

• I'm worried about how much weight I'm gaining. Between weeks 29-31, I gained eight pounds. Between weeks 31-33, I gained anouther seven. That's horrifying to me considering I'm creeping up on the weight that I was at when I had lap band surgery. My Ob-Gyn is completely non-plussed by the whole thing and tells me its fluid retention and moving my blood pressure medication from "as needed" to twice a day will reduce swelling and water weight. For me, every visit is filled with self loathing. "How did I let myself get this fat? I don't feel like I"m eating that much more. I still puke all the time. What the hell is going on? Exactly how fat am I going to be before this baby comes out?"

• I'm worried about my giant baby. Although it has not been for lack of trying, I have not been officially diagnosed with gestational diabetes. I've taken three, one-hour glucose test and two, three-hour glucose tests. This all started at Week 19 when my eye doctor noticed a dramatic change in my vision, which precludes me from wearing my eye glasses and precipitated my buying a whole new set of disposable contact lenses. Since I can't wear my contacts 24 hours a day, I spent a lot of time squinting at things, like the keyboard and the television. The second three-hour glucose test I did today was almost my undoing. I fasted for 12 hours (and didn't cheat this time), got my blood drawn four times while simultaneously fasted for another three hours after consuming a sickly sweet beverage. I was seriously tempted to just eat a donut before the test today, but I decided to stick it out and see what the results would be without it. At 32 weeks, Baby Bean was measuring over 6lbs. We could take about how inaccurate ultrasound measurements are and yadda yadda yadda, but that's still big. I already had one 9lb kid and it turns out KGII was a 9lb kid himself. KGII keeps telling me that it's genetic since he's 6'3 and has never been small. I keep telling him to shut it.

• It makes me sad that my friends in real life and on the Internet all seem to have had their babies already. It makes me feel like I'm in some kind of holding pattern where time moves for everyone else, but stands still for me. Some women remark on how fast their pregnancy moved for them and how it felt like it was over in a blink of an eye. These women probably left morning sickness behind in their first trimester, that's all I can figure out. On a day to day basis, I have no idea how sick I'm going to be. Most days, I'm fine. I get up, get Zac ready for school, go to therapy, come home, get Zac ready for bed and go to sleep myself. Then there are days when my blood pressure spikes, I get a headache, and vomit almost continuously. I've also taken to asking my friends to kill me and take the baby, emergency C-section style while leaving my carcass on the side of the road. Apparently this kind of talk is "disturbing" and I'm told to keep a positive attitude because "pregnancy can't last forever". No, but it can be a very long 10 months. I am working on being positive.

• I've always struggled with self validation, relying instead on my over achieving, competitive personality to be validated by authority figures; teachers, coaches, parents, mentors. Back when I made the decision to leave work at 20 weeks, I was wrecked with self doubt and recrimination, especially when all the worst case scenarios like preeclampsia, bed rest, and early fetal viability didn't come true. The high risk doctor explicitly told me that if I continued to get sick, they would take the baby at 34 weeks, trying to hold out to 37 weeks if they could. My regular Ob Gyn doesn't want me going past 39 weeks (which would be March 13th). Next week will be my 34th week and I am still able to leave the house on my own, go to therapy, and take care of Zac to the best of my ability. I'm proud and to use therapeutic language, I'm grounded in my reality that this never would have been a possibility if I had continued working. I don't need external validation. I look down and see my uterus moving with Baby Bean and I know that I made the right decision. I did what I had to do to protect my health and my baby's health.

So, more belly shots to come. Hopefully a return to more blog postings and happier topics like nesting, decorating the nursery, and finally getting a car seat. Things aren't all doom and gloom around here. There is a lot of lightness and happiness and way more naps than one woman should be allowed to take.