Several Updates.

I've been a lazy blogger, so this will be several updates all at once.

Update 1: 37 weeks pregnant? Yes. 37 weeks pregnant.

I had my 37 week appointment this past Saturday, and this was our home visit. Our midwife comes to our house for a few reasons. First and foremost, she has to be sure it's a safe dwelling for delivering a baby, which really means a roof over the head and reasonably clean. Darrick and I spent quite a bit of time over the past few weeks cleaning our house and getting ready to welcome a baby into it, and I'll openly admit I wanted it to look nice for her visit. No one wants their house to be a mess the first time someone sees it, right? Well...not always right. See, at our LAST appointment, Darrick asked MW why she does the home visit, and she told us the story of the ONE home she visited that was not suitable for a birth. Apparently, it involved 20 cats, 5 men and 1 woman, dirty underwear on the floor, and filth everywhere. Amazingly, hearing this story took some pressure off my need to have a perfectly clean home for her visit, as she assured me that as long as the bongs were stashed away out of site and the dog poop was relegated to ONE room, we'd be fine. :::phew:::

So anyhow, the other main reason our MW makes a home visit is to be sure she knows where we live. Picture going into labor at 3 a.m. and your midwife not being able to find your house. NOT something I want to have happen to me. She also wanted to check to be sure we had all the supplies we need (see previous post...and we do now, thanks to my mom who donated paper bags and old beach towels to 'The Cause'). Of course, the appointment included most of the standard appointment procedures as well (heartrate is in 150s, my belly measured at 36 weeks, baby is head down with back to my left in ideal positioning). I also pointed out my ankle swelling to her (apparently Andre dropped this past week, as it appeared on Thursday when I'd had NONE before) and she giggled at me. Her response was something to the effect of 'You call THAT swelling? That is NOT swelling!', but anyone who's familiar with the Barbie-like proportions of my ankles (too bad the REST of me did not follow suit) will realize that swelling to ME is different than it is to the rest of the civilized world. We talked a little about my labor fear (I won't go into too much detail, but let's just say when I read birth stories involving the word 'bulge' they make my skin crawl), as well as when in labor we need to contact her. All in all, a good if relatively uneventful appointment. I declined having a check done for progress (again, if you don't know what I am referring to, you should probably just consider yourself lucky) because I consider it a lose-lose prospect. I figure if I'm not dilating yet, I'll be sad that means these pains I've been having are for naught. And if I AM dilating, I'll spend from now till labor worrying when it's going to happen and if my water will break in public and and and and....

Our next appointment is this coming Saturday, assuming I make it that far. I'm feeling like baby will be here sometime after March 1st but before my expected due date of March 14th. Darrick is convinced Andre is making a timely arrival like his/her older sister did. I call that wishful thinking on his part, and I love him for his optimism.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update 2: Sausage?

I'm sort of embarassed to admit this, because I tend to shun fast food in general, and overall I'm a fairly healthy eater, assuming that when one says 'overall' one is allowing some leeway for excess desserts consumed in pregnancy.

That being said, Darrick has created this 'routine' of sorts on the weekend. He takes Luca to Mc Donald's, where they share a Sausage Egg McMuffin (well, and Darrick gets another just for him, but the point is Lu can't eat the whole thing, so their routine is sharing one). While I tried to appreciate the cute Daddy-Daughterness of this little weekend routine (and it really is their routine, because although I sometimes go with, they WILL go without me if I opt out), I knew we had created a monster when, a few weeks ago on our way to the zoo, we pulled into the McD's parking lot, and Luca's eyes lit up. Her little hand shot into the air, pointing at the golden arches, and she exclaimed, "SAUSAGE!!!".

Yeah.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Update 3: Meh...it'll come later. I am suddenly bored with blogging for now.

Appointment time again!

Remember my post about the Belgian Waffle craving? And how I almost switched to the pancakes but decided to hold off on them until the morning of my next appointment? Because I needed to carb up prior to getting my blood drawn to check for Gestational Diabetes?

So, my day started off less than ideal. My appointment was at 9 today, which meant I needed to finish breeakfast by 8 am so my blood would be drawn at least 1 hour after eating. I loaded Luca into the car and decided to brave IHOP alone, in search of pancake nrivana. I had planned on a feast of lemon blueberry streusel pancakes, and IHOP no longer has them. Apparently I looked sad (and fat) enough, so the waitress went and asked if they had the batter still to see if she could whip me up an approximation of the dreamcakes, but to no avail. I opted for stuffed french toast...good, but not the same. Luca got an order of 2 sausage links (she LOVES sausage for breeakfast), which she took maybe 3 bites of before repeatedly telling me, "All done, mama." Over and over. And over. And did I mention repeatedly? And over and over again? Yeah. I thought so.

My appointment went well. Two of my Midwife's apprentices were there, so everyone got to measure the belly (a bit ahead at 32-33 cm), feel the baby (position is exactly as I expected, with head down in left hipbone and feet in right ribcage), listen to the HB (150s) and do my blood pressure reading (fine and dandy).

I told our MW we nicknamed the baby Andre the Giant, and she laughed. She asked how long Luca was (22.5 inches) and I told her my mom's 2nd was 24 inches long. She nodded, smiled, and said, "It wouldn't surprise me if yours is about that." Eeek! She DID tell me baby feels lean, and his/her head feels fairly small-average sized, which was good to hear.

She gave me the option to not step on the scale this week (what with the holidays and the stuffed french toast just consumed), but I did and everything is fine there. If, by fine you mean "Holy shit I am a beast of a whale of a beast! I never want to weigh this much ever again! Could you amputate an arm or something since dieting is verbotin in pregnancy?!?!". But, really, she was not worried so I tried to act casual as the absurdity of stepping on the scale and announcing my new, higher than ever weight to 3 women hit me. Never in my life would I do that, except in pregnancy. Then again, when else in life do I invite a kindly woman I scarcely know to come to my home and prod my netherlands? Yeah, the answer there is never. But I figure I'm already pregnant, so I may as well LIVE a litte!

My next appointment is in 2 weeks, and I get the birth kit. In it will be things like a footprint kit, cord clamp, chux pads (if you don't know, consider yourself lucky and move on), a peri bottle and herbs (again, don't ask...just keep skimming), and other essentials. Once I get a good look in there, I'll have some stocking up to do as I need to buy some towels and plastic sheets to protect our floor and bed, along with a few other things I'm sure. The appointment following that is at my house. Which means I better start doing some cleaning and organizing now, so that things are set for her visit and the birth that follows sometime in the next 2 months or so. Anytime after 36 weeks if I go into labor we're good to go.

Well...I should say anytime after 36 weeks, we are hypothetically good to go. But the closer I get to that day, the more I get scared by all the silly things. I'm not worried about something going wrong in labor or with the baby. I'm more worried about things like the pain of contractions...whether my dogs will spazz out...more contractions...how Darrick will react...did I mention contractions?...whether we will keep Luca here (I'd prefer to) or send her off with family (may be necessary)...transition contractions...whether the tub will really help me...crowning. I feel as if there is so much prep work yet to be done. It's mental (psyching myself up), emotional (dealing with adding another kid into the mix, Luca not being our 'only', the emotion of a new baby and postpartum hormonal wackiness), spiritual (not to get all new-agey, but hello? human life being created here!), and physical (human life not only being created, but also expelled from whence it came).

But it is also practical. How many towels do we need? Should the tub be downstairs where there is more light and room but less privacy and no toilet close by or upstairs in our room where it will be more crowded and I may hate having the permanent association of giving birth? Will we have enough hot water? Do we call our families early in labor or after baby comes? What kind of food will we want to eat in labor and after? If I invite Elizabeth over for stew later that week, will she be able to guess the secret ingredient is placenta (I KID, Elizabeth!! I KID!! We're making jerky instead...you like jerky, right?)? What will I wear in labor? Should I create a music playlist? And on...and on...and on. I think the practical distractions keep me from getting too worried over the pain of childbirth, but I am not entirely sure about that. I just know I have SO much to prepare, and it's coming up fast!!

Holy Hell.

I had a scary realization today.

I am pregnant. And due in about 17 weeks.

I am going to have a baby. At home. With no drugs. And too much of a 'rule-follower' mentality to even take a shot of whiskey to dull the pain. Just a birth tub, my husband, and a midwife.

Holy hell. What did I get myself into?!?!?!

Now I can breathe.

I'm not supposed to admit this, I'm sure, but ever since our scan last week I've been in limbo. You see, the results of our ultrasound were less promising than we'd hoped for. Essentially, we were told a normal measurement for our baby's nuchal area (back of the neck) was up to 3.0, and our baby measured at 2.8. That measurement put him/her in the 'borderline high' range, which of course set off alarms in our heads. Basically, we had to wait for the bloodwork to come back in order to get a full picture of our baby's risk of having Downs or Trisomy. Both were scary, but Trisomy in particular can end in fetal death or death very shortly after birth. This was NOT an ourcome I was prepared for, and quite honestly it wasn't something I expected to HAVE to worry about. We're young enough we shouldn't have a high risk, and no one in either family has had Downs or Trisomy. And yet....there it was in black and white on a fax to my MW "Borderline High".

And so....I spent the past week feeling dazed and detached. I am sure this is where I am supposed to wax poetic about children being a gift from God and us not being given a challenge we can't handle, but the truth was I was petrified. Could we handle a kid with Downs? Trisomy? Did we want to continue a pregnancy if we knew there was a good chance our child had one of these chromosomal defects? Did we want to live with ourselves for having to make that kind of decision?

Luckily, we didn't have to decide. We got the word today that the bloodwork came back, and the results were so good they negated the questionable results from the ultrasound. The chance this baby has Downs is about 3 times less than average for women my age. And the chance of Trisomy is less than 1 in 10,000.

I feel like a weight has been lifted. Like I can let myself dream and imagine without worry or fear. That I can fall in love with this baby's movements in my belly, and imagine what its face will look like. That I'm not setting myself up for disappointment. I feel free. I can breathe.