LDB: Week 16

On Saturday I'll be 16 weeks pregnant. As if time hadn't already started flying fast enough after I graduated from college 9 years ago (really?! 9?!), I guess this whole being a parent thing makes it fly at warp speed?

The past few weeks have been... interesting, to say the least. Last week in particular... but where to start without giving a whole long medical history of myself...

Well, let's start with the Down's screening we did. That went well--our risk of the baby having either Down's Syndrome or Trisomies 13 or 18 is less than 1 in 10,000. That's better than your average 20 year old woman, so that was awesome. But as this pregnancy has gone along, my high risk OB has become more and more concerned with potential problems with all of my health problems. We started out with a midwife as our primary obstetric care provider and the high risk OB on the side for backup, but the HR OB was wondering if perhaps I should switch to a straight up MD, and if maybe I should move my care to MCV rather than St. Francis, since all of my specialists are at MCV and they're basically ready for anything. At St. Francis, they'd have to move me if anything got too crazy.

That probably sounds awful... all my health problems... potential problems... well, the thing is, it's not. I have a couple forms of arthritis and an autoimmune disease called hereditary angioedema and apparently a mild form of something called Klippel Trenaunay Weber Syndrome. None of these poses any real risk to the baby, it's moreso a question of what happens if I end up in a flare of one of the autoimmune things during the pregnancy? Who's gonna handle it? How's it gonna be handled?

Ironically, the night after I had conversation with my HR OB wherein I told him I wasn't worried about this, I have lived with these problems my whole life and I know how to handle it, I had a horrible attack of angioedema. This is a swelling condition... there's a certain enzyme I'm deficient of, and if my levels of that get too low, I have crazy abdominal swelling. The swelling pushes on all your organs and it hurts like a sonofabitch. It makes you nauseated and there's really nothing you can do but take something for the pain and wait it out. Yes, that blows, but I've been there a time or two (or 20) and I know that typically I can sleep through a lot of it, then within about 36 hours I'm getting better.

Well, not this time. I was 48 hours in and my pain was spiking to an 8 or 9 on a 10 point scale, and I was holding steady at a 6 or a 7 when I wasn't having stabbing pains. So I told Bryan it was time to go to the hospital. We came to MCV in the middle of the night on Saturday of last week. I knew I was dehydrated, and I just needed someone to do SOMETHING for the pain and nausea.

Thankfully, the people here took very good care of me, but I didn't get better very quickly. My immunologist came in on Monday and got the process rolling to get in a supply of this wonder drug that IS the enzyme I'm deficient of in a concentrated form. Unfortunately, it's very new to the market and it was going to be 24 hours before I could get it. So I stayed in the hospital, with the lovely doctors managing my pain and nausea and me getting sicker of being in the bed by the minute. Bryan stayed by my side almost the whole time--he was working night shift, so he slept in the chair in my room during the day and went to work at night. I had some visitors to keep me company (thanks Dad, Leslie, Krystyna and Maia!), and finally, on Tuesday, I got the miracle infusion.

It's weird to think that there is a drug that stops a swelling attack within 30 minutes, but there is. An hour after I had that medication in my IV, I knew the swelling had stopped. I still felt like crap, but, I mean, wouldn't you, after being sick for five days and being in the hospital for three of those? Thankfully, my immunologist arranged for the pharmacy at MCV to keep another dose of this medication in case I or another angioedema patient have another attack... next time, I'll be in ASAP rather than suffering for days!

I took Wednesday off of work, too, at my doctor's orders, and Thursday came back for half a day. I think it was weird to everyone that I had been in the hospital yet was already back at work. But once the swelling was gone, I was practically good as new!

Friday I intended to work a full day, but guess what? I got in a car accident on the way to work. As if I needed that on top of the week I had already had! Thankfully it was pretty minor--there was a rear-ending in front of me on the interstate, I had the good sense to be far enough behind the person in front of me that I did NOT rear end her, but the lady behind me was not so sensible, nor was the lady behind her. So... that put another kink in the week. I was a little stiff, and didn't think there had been any damage to Little Dancing Baby, but I went to my midwife that afternoon just to check... LDB's heart was beating just fine, at 152 beats/minute. :)

So, after all of that, I decided my high risk OB is right. I think it's better for me to transfer my care to MCV so that all of the people who know about all of my things are under one roof and can consult with each other (or be available) as needed. So we'll have our first appointment with our new OB on December 1. Good times. :)

In other news, I went last weekend and bought maternity clothes. The bump is growing, for sure. And yesterday, I felt the baby move. I think I've felt it before, but this time, there was no question in my mind whether it was gas or something else... it was our LDB, dancing up a storm in there.

And it was amazing. :) I can't wait until s/he is big enough that his/her Daddy can feel the movement too... I feel like I'm hogging all the fun! :)

LDB: Week 13

So yesterday was LDB's birthday... or whatever you call it before they're born. I have been feeling pretty good... mainly I've been HUNGRY. It's not totally out of control yet, but occasionally I get this intense black hole feeling in my stomach, and it's typically no more than an hour and a half or two hours after the last time I ate. Baby's HONGRAY! :)

We keep trying to remember to take belly pictures on LDB's birthday, but really there hasn't been much of a change until the past week or two. And most people tell me I still don't really look pregnant, but my pants can tell for sure, and you can probably tell from these lovely pictures of my pale white belly.

Week 5:

Week 13:
I cleaned out the closet today of all of the clothes I was meaning to get rid of before I got pregnant (stuff I haven't worn in a couple years), and while I was at it I took out all of the stuff I won't be able to wear this year but I still hope to wear in the future, then also all of the stuff I still like, but am not fooling myself to think I'll ever wear it again after I have this baby. Not that I intend to let myself go totally to pot, it's just that we women have a tendency to hold on to a few things we love that, really, we should have stopped wearing a year or two ago because they don't fit quite the way they're supposed to anymore. :)

Tuesday is the Down's Syndrome testing... we went back and forth about whether or not to do the test at all, but ultimately decided that it would be easier to plan and be prepared for any special needs if there's a way for us to know about them ahead of time. Plus, there's another ultrasound involved, and I'm all about another opportunity to see LDB in there. :)

September: A Retrospective

Now that it's November, I have finally uploaded pictures from our camera from the past two months.

In addition to trying to keep the big secret of me being pregnant in September, Bryan and I kept pretty busy.

Let's see..

• We spent Labor Day weekend in Pennsylvania with Bryan's family, where I got to hold 6-week old twins. They were born six weeks early, so at the picnic they each only weighed about 6 or 7 lbs. I let Bryan know that our child may NEVER weigh that much in the outside world, since I was the smallest of my mom's three children at 9lbs 9oz, and my Grandma recently informed me that all of HER kids were more than 9 lbs.
  
• We spent the following weekend at the Outer Banks, NC with our dear friends Todd and Sarah. I wore the equivalent of a nude colored bathing suit: And Bryan rubbed off his top layer of skin, and subsequently any sunscreen he had applied, playing football on the beach with Todd, resulting in this: Needless to say, we only had one day on the beach. (More photos of our beach trip if you click here.)
  
• Bryan turned 33, and we celebrated by using a free night's stay I had at the Crowne Plaza Downtown (where we stayed for our wedding night). I gave Bryan a bocce set for his birthday, so before meeting some friends at Buffalo Wild Wings to watch some football, we went down to Brown's Island and played a few games. Fun times!
• And on the last day of September, we celebrated our 3rd anniversary with dinner at Bonefish Grill. We also took a weekend trip to Boston to celebrate, but that didn't happen until October, so I'll get to that later. :)

Oh, Paris, I miss you!

Last week, I noticed a little card on one of the bulletin boards in our building advertising: "Fridays are crepe days at the Who Spilled the Milk cart!" A month or two ago we got this new breakfast cart on the street outside where I work that sells cereal and yogurt and fruit and stuff. I went there once, but this baby in my belly doesn't care for milk so much, so I haven't been back.

Seeing that they'd be serving crepes, though, oh dear. Trust me, I have planned to have crepes from this cart today ever since I saw that ad.

I think most people are familiar with crepes, but if you're not, they're basically very thin pancakes. In other parts of the world, they fill them with all kinds of goodness and you can eat them for any meal. I was first introduced to them when I visited Paris the first time in 1996... in Paris, you can do crepes in a fancy restaurant or as street food. One of the restaurants Bryan and I went to in South Africa was a crepe restaurant... there, mine was filled with some pork/peaches deliciousness, Bryan's had chili con carne. I haven't seen much of the ol' crepe here in Virginia, but everywhere else they seem to share my affection.

Street crepes in Paris are where it's at. Whether you get it with just butter and sugar (to die for) or get a savory option, like ham and cheese (drool), you can't really go wrong. I can remember being torn a lot of times between whether I wanted a giant baguette (don't need anything with it) or a crepe while I wandered around the City of Lights... heavenly times... :)

So I knew at the breakfast cart that I probably wasn't going to be getting real live Parisian crepes, but I still went. What I got was okay... a thin pancake with Nutella and strawberries... but then he rolled it up and cut it in half and put it in a bowl. Hmm. I kind of wanted to school him on how he should REALLY be doing it, but... well, that's not my place, is it?

Anyway, now I can't stop thinking about Paris. And how completely fabulous it would be to be standing in front of the person doing this:

Something's been going on.

I just logged in and saw that I haven't blogged since September 3! Oh, mercy! And if you'll notice, even that was commentary on the news, nothing about me or my life. And yes, there is a reason for that. It's hard to write about anything when there's something big going on that you have decided not to talk about (at least for the moment).

So August was a crazy month, what with my birthday, my sister staying with us, a birthday party for my Mom and Sister, then getting Victoria off to college. It was one of those months where you're doing good to remember all of the things on your immediate radar and make sure everything gets done. It was a good month, but definitely a busy one.

Cut to the very last weekend of that month. I'll attempt to avoid the whole TMI phenomenon, but let's just say that visitor I expect every month had not shown up yet. And at first I had the "oh, tomorrow... tomorrow it'll be here" attitude about it. And then I had the "holy shit she's never taken this long to arrive but that probably doesn't mean anything" attitude about it. And then, I went to Target and bought a test.

You probably know where this is going now. :)

Because it's something that not enough people who go through it talk about, I have to tell you here that Bryan and I have been trying to have a baby for about two years. I'll also tell you that we went through quite a few (seven) cycles of fertility treatments until I was in an awful place mentally and we decided to take a break before moving on to more expensive forms of fertility treatment. So we did take a break... we went to South Africa, we had a lot of fun over the summer, but I was still thinking about it every month. Until August, of course. That month I was so convinced we were never going to get pregnant on our own that I even called and made an appointment with a different fertility specialist to get a second opinion before we launched into the next step.

Okay, back to the end of August. I went to Target with shaky knees and bought a pregnancy test. I'd been through so many of those buggers during the early days of us trying that I almost didn't want to take it and have the disappointment of the negative test. But I also knew that this was probably going to be the time that all of that changed...

I got home and immediately took the test. I brought it out to the couch and sat with Bryan while we waited for it to tell us our fate. I purposefully bought the ones that either say Pregnant or Not Pregnant, because I did not want any of this "one line or two?" interpretation business.

The little hourglass turned a few times, maybe for a minute, maybe two, and then, this:


I gasped. We laughed. We squeezed each other to pieces until one of us said, "Crap, don't squish the baby!" There were some happy tears. And a lot of... well, surprise!

I called my fertility doc the next day, got in to get some blood work to confirm, went in to see her to find out the results and had an early ultrasound. All you could see was a tiny black dot, but, still, it was obviously there. (Incidentally, our child spent weeks 4-10 being called TBD, for Tiny Black Dot.) We then got appointments with the high risk OB (since I have two autoimmune diseases) and the midwife, and kept our news pretty quiet. Since we had tried for so long, we wanted to have a little more certainty that everything was going well before we started spreading the news. We did tell some close family and friends, but tried to put off telling everyone else until after the first trimester.

Of course, then we had our 10-week ultrasound last week, and hearing that tiny heart beating 174 beats a minute, and seeing our Little Dancing Baby (LDB) moving all around in my belly was so amazing and wonderful that we decided we were ready to spread the word! :)

I've been feeling generally like crap, but my morning sickness and other pregnancy symptoms have been nothing compared to some stories I have heard. Plus I asked for this, so I can't complain. :) I'm keeping my fingers crossed that I'll be one of those people who doesn't have any of that after the first trimester. I miss actually WANTING to eat food. :)

LDB is due on May 8, 2010. The thing that gets me the most is that, as amazing as last week's ultrasound was, it's only going to get MORE amazing from here. Wow.

Here's a peek at LDB from our ultrasound last week. This was after the American Bandstand audition... baby had to take a little siesta after all that hard work! :)

Stranger than fiction.

People, you can not make this stuff up!

Okay, well, I guess you probably could, but these two stories are real live news items from CNN this morning. I almost barfed on the bus coming in to work while reading the headlines in my email about this first one:

FDA says residue is frog or toad; how did it get in Pepsi can?

Yes. You read that right. Some poor, poor man in Florida took a big ol' swig of his Diet Pepsi as he was cooking some food on the grill, and was greeted with a *SCHLOP* right into the kisser. And that *SCHLOP* turned out to be a GUTLESS FROG OR TOAD! Oh, mama! The wife said when she took the can away and dumped out all of the Diet Pepsi, what started coming out looked like "pink linguine."

HO-LEE MOSES. If that ain't enough to get you off the soft drinks!

There's a picture on the CNN site if you've got a strong stomach or are just morbidly curious. :)

And then, there was this story:

Stranger allegedly slaps crying child in store

Some lady had her kid in Wal-Mart in Georgia, and the 2-year-old was pissed. Girlfriend would not stop crying. I guess it was really bothering this old dude, because he decided he would take the parenting of this child into his own hands (literally). He told the mom if she didn't shut the kid up, then he would. And when Little Miss did not quit with the crying, he sure did. He found them in the next aisle and SLAPPED THE CHILD! Like four or five times, they said!

You know, I bet you that man is the type who sits around with his older friends talking about how parents nowadays just let their kids walk all over them, and what kids these days need is a little discipline! A good smack never hurt anybody when I was growing up! I mean, besides turning me into the type of person who would slap a stranger's 2-year-old in the face!

Mr. Slaphappy was arrested, but first he did apologize to the mother. And I'm sure he said, "If you'd do that a little more often, she wouldn't be so ornery!"



Man, the world is awesome. ;-)

Little Sister, All Grown Up.

Okay, so part of the reason I have been conspicuously absent from my blog is that my little sister came and stayed with Bryan and me for the last few weeks before she set off for college. She was about to turn 18, and was incredibly anxious to get out of tiny little Bath County, so we agreed that she could come squat in Chesterfield for a bit.

We agreed before she came that this visit wouldn't be like the normal visits she and our brother had made to our house, which generally consisted of lots of shopping and lots of eating out. We would want her to act like she lived there if she was going to be there that long, with household duties and hopefully with a job to earn some spending money. As it turned out, I have some awesome friends who employed her while she was here. Maia and Sue gave her babysitting work, and Leslie somehow finagled an actual full-ish-time gig at her own workplace for Victoria doing clerical stuff. This was awesome, even though it did mean she would not be sitting at my house cataloging the assloads of clothes and such we need to take to the Goodwill. :) (Seriously, use the It's Deductible! software by TurboTax. You will thank me when you get your tax return.)


Anyway, we had an extra car Vic could drive, but since she'd be working downtown and I work downtown, I suggested she, too, take the bus in to the city. She liked this idea, because that meant she didn't have to drive in big scary Richmond city traffic. :) Of course, it also meant that she had to take a *real* city bus from MCV to near the Science Museum. Oh, lord, did that girl have some stories to tell about those buses. :)

The first day she went to work, I rode the bus with her and was trying to make sure she was going to remember where to get off the bus the next day, because I come to work way earlier than she would be coming. I looked at her after asking if she thought she had all of what I was telling her, and she said, "Lydia, you don't understand, it's like country mouse/city mouse!"

And then I got it. I mean, I know the girl grew up in the middle of nowhere, but I guess I hadn't quite realized how overwhelming functioning in a city could be. Things I take for granted (like, for example, walking on concrete?) were basically foreign to her. That day I knew that while she had her own reasons for coming to stay with us, it was really fortunate that she had chosen to do so--the girl needed a transition period before she was plopped down in Newport News to fend for herself!

(She bought herself a cigar on her 18th birthday, just because she could. :) )

So we had a very nice three and a half week transitional visit. :) The time she was here was hectic (sometimes I wonder when my life is *not* hectic), but I really enjoyed it. The three of us became a nice little family unit, with Bryan as brotherdad and me as sistermom... since we still felt like we needed to "parent" her to some degree, but really we're her siblings and she has two parents, so it was an interesting line. Personally I think it worked out pretty well, I think she'd say the same?



She was here to celebrate her birthday and mom's birthday, and then it was time for Bryan and I to pack her back up and drive her to college. Victoria's going to Christopher Newport University, and lemme tell you, I don't know if all colleges are doing this now, but EASIEST COLLEGE MOVE IN EVER!!!! You pull up in a line of cars, then wait your turn until the move-in volunteer students are ready with their rolly hotel carts and big plastic bins on wheels, then they unload your car and take everything up to the student's room, and unload it there. Uh, seriously. Didn't lift a finger from the time we finished packing up the car (although that was finger-lifting enough!) until we had to put things in their place in Victoria's dorm room. Excellent!

It was bittersweet to leave Victoria at school, but she's in good hands--she's rooming with her best friend since elementary school, whose name is also Victoria. I'm hoping they take very good care of each other. :)

Milestone Birthday Celebration

Two Saturdays ago, we celebrated my mom turning 50 and my little turning 18 at our house. Somehow we managed to get a good representation of my mom's side of the family there, and we had a blast! As my cousin Cassandra always says, it's nice to get the family together for something besides a funeral or a wedding. :)

Cassandra and her mom, my Aunt Brenda (really my mom's aunt, but that's what I call her, too) came up from North Carolina. My Aunt Jean (again, mom's aunt) and her daughter Jill and her daughter Caroline came over (from Hopewell and Chester), and my Papa and step-grandmother Sandra came too! I can't tell you how long it's been since these people were together for something happy. Our friend Leslie also came, since she's practically family. :)

We had tons of good laughs, some decent eats, and way too much cake and fire for one birthday party. Since my birthday was just the weekend before, I somehow got included in this celebration, even though I had my big party last year... 31 doesn't count as a milestone! :)


Mom welcomed 50 with a smile, Vic couldn't stop grinning about finally being 18, and we had a great time! :)

70s Night at Wabi Sabi in Petersburg

New air filter

If you ask for a new air filter in your office here, this is the kind of ridiculousness you get. Looks kinda like cotton candy to me. Also looks kind of half-assed, but maybe that's the only way they can do it?