whining – My Truant Pen

Sick of the crud

So I am sick. With the crud. Possibly the creeping ick. Ok, ok so my doctor says it is bronchitis, sinus infection and ear infections on top of the Cold of Dread and Doom which has sapped my energy and will to live for about 10 days now. Of course, in that ten day period, things have been happening. Big things. Like, oh, Piemas. I did manage to make 5 pies for Piemas, and get everyone fed etc. But the usual joyous spirit of hospitality I like to think I bring to such events was largely missing. Instead, there were several times I snuck upstairs for catnaps.

Then I got my mother in law really sick with the same horrible, dreadful disease, right before shipping her home. We were supposed to do all kinds of things while she was here. Instead, there was a lot of going to bed at 8:30 going on in these parts. I heard from my mother, who was sick with it when she came here about a month ago. She says she’s starting to feel better. A month later. This makes me want to cry, if crying didn’t require way too much energy.

I’ve lost about four pounds since I got sick, from complete lack of appetite and energy.

I haven’t missed a day of work. Because work does not respect being sick. No it does not. My boss is even sicker than I am, and she’s still making it to almost all her meetings. Her boss has an infection in his knee that’s not getting better after some surgery, and neither one has slowed him down in the slightest.

At least no one else in the family is nearly as sick as I am. My husband coughed a little for a few days. The boys have seemed unaffected. I’m the only one who got flattened by it (well, my MIL looked a lot like I feel) and then of course it goes secondary. The sinus pressure is unbelievable. I finally went out and bought (gulp) a neti pot. And psuephedrine. I HATE psuephedrine. Hate it. Hate it hate it hate it. But I can’t handle this headache. It sends stabbing pains through my head every time I cough. And I cough a lot. The other day, I nearly threw up after a crazy coughing fit.

The worst part is, as I struggle to get back to at least 80%, is I can watch the work piling up. The laundry, yes. The dishes, my husband has done. The house is perhaps not immaculate. There are no leftovers in the fridge for lunches next week. And then there’s the taxes — totally my purview — due soon. I need to sign Grey up for summer camp (sounds so fun!). I need to plan our incredibly complicated 4 part trip to Washington State. I need to do the Costco shopping. I need to do the grocery shopping. There’s a bunch of spring maintenance uncovered by the melting snow that needs attention.

So I lie here on the couch, miserable, and think of all the things I ought to be doing.

In other news, I got my hair cut. It’s a nice haircut, I think, except I’m highly unskilled in hair arts and don’t know how to properly blow my hair dry so I’m having trouble making it look right. Also, I thought it was this big epic change and not that many people have noticed it. Possibly they’re distracted by my sniffling and doubling over with coughs.

This is what it looked like when I got back from the salon. I can't make it do this.

Oh, and on one of my sickest “Really shouldn’t be here” days at work when I was a little stormcloud of snot, I got a pretty big cool award as recognition of my exemplary attitude. (Really.) Which is pretty darn cool, but felt rather ironic when I was so darn grumpy.

Also, it’s spring. I meant to write big, poetic post about it, but like so many other tasks that one has gone unaddressed. But I figure you won’t discover the seasons are changing without my telling you about it (based on what I do write about), so in case you’re wondering… spring.

Yeah, I think I better go before more of my exemplary attitude comes out my nose. (HONK!)

What do you mean that haircut isn't radically different? I used _product_

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming

It’s always hard to return to writing after having posted something Deep and Meaningful. For example, my life today is deeply centered on poop, snot and laundry. It’s a hard come-down to go from summarizing a man’s life to poop, snot and laundry (although I suspect he would’ve been deeply sympathetic on at least the poop and snot counts).

We’re sick here at my house. Not like desperately sick. Not running fevers and throwing up sick. No, we’re snotty sick — the kind of sick that can go on for months without exciting too much comment, and you don’t realize just how not well you were feeling until you start feeling well again. I have a diagnosed secondary infection (and am on antibiotics). Thane has already had one bout of antibiotics and is now pathetically, sadly full of snot. Oh, the snot. The thing is, babies mostly breathe through their noses. And his poor, wee little nose is so clogged up, he can’t breathe. And them as can’t breathe, can’t sleep. Every hour or so his mother heartlessly tortures him with a suction device of great cruelty. His nose is bleeding from where snot-scabs had to be removed. Every breath is a snorffle of unhappiness. I have him sleeping in his swing. I do suction out his poor nose. I have the humidifier going. I attempted to torture him further, uh, help him out by irrigating his nose with saline. These are the remedies available in the 21st century, all the drugs of the 20th century having been proven not to help babies and may cause harm. Salt water and suction.

Grey is sick too. His nose is like a Hawaiian (that has far too many consecutive vowels) volcano, with overlapping floes. I’m not too worried about him. He’s discovered the joy of sleeves as stand-ins for tissues. I would argue, but it beats the couch.

We will not speak of the poop, except to say that finding the cat gift at 3 am last night elevated my poop woes to a level to which they needed not go. One grownup and four poop-producing-machines is really unfair odds.

My brother came out this weekend to help out, which was actually very helpful. He made it possible for me to sleep in. Ah, blessed sleep. How I missed you. He also kept me from feeling too lonely. I am a social creature by nature. I like people. Preferably people whose poop I’m not responsible for. But he had to go back down to Princeton this afternoon, so it’s just me and the poop-producers again. Grey is sometimes company, but he’s also started getting into things. I need to be more alert, watch him more carefully, set out clearer rules and consequences, and follow through. That sounds like work to me. I think we may play with computers tonight. That is less like work.

My husband will return to me on Wednesday. I in no way begrudge the time he is spending with his mother. There’s no more important thing for him to be doing. But I also miss him. Every time I think about how I miss him and how I miss having him around, I get all sniffly because my husband is gone for a week. My mother-in-law’s husband is gone.

The boys awaken. I think I need to bring them both to the doctor tomorrow, to see if they have drifted into secondary infections. Likely so. I can’t wait to go back to work!

Would you like some cheese with that whine?

Where to start? My keyboard decided to suddenly have three letters not work. I’m 10 months pregnant. My hormones…. OMG my hormones. I’m not sleeping. I have a three year old who is a great kid but, let’s face it, three. And I am kinda at least a little sick.

None of these are dire, drastic, horrible things. These are what we like to call “annoyances”.

So I went in to my midwife appointment. I spent my usual 5 – 10 minutes HATING the daytime tv they have on with strict notes that we patients are not to touch it. I am subjected to a woman who hates her facial hair and a serious discussion of which kind of nose job is better.

Then I go into the room and don’t really like what the scale says and the nurse-person has trouble taking my blood pressure, as usual. I wait the standard 5 more minutes with a piece of paper across my legs, reading an article in a parenting magazine. It is about a problem I do not have and will never have.

My midwife comes in. I like her, I do. But she has HAD IT. She was in an accident on Friday and no one in the office even asked how she was doing and she came in and the phone calls were stacked high and instead of concern they just told her that people were waiting for her already and when she asked for time off they talked about how it would affect her numbers for the month… in the course of our 15 minute exam, she broke into tears three times. Dammit, I’m the hormonal pregnant woman here! Her staff really do probably not give her much support or nurturing. They’re the sort of “It’s 5 so I’m leaving” types who are all about just meeting their obligations and not noticing what other people need. (In fairness, they’re also pretty efficient.) Her corporate structure (she’s part of a huge organization) is totally failing, because someone in her chain of command should have noticed that she’s really struggling with what’s being asked of her and taken some steps to find ways to address it — just as a good management technique. And she really needs to do a better job of managing her own stress. Maybe she should have the conversation with her staff about how they’re not being supportive — or her boss. Not her 40 week and one day patient who happens to be a good listener.

Oh, and do you remember when she did the pelvic exam at 36 weeks and I was 1 cm dilated and 90% effaced and I told all y’all not to get excited? According to today’s pelvic exam, all the contractions I’ve been having have accomplished…. absolutely nothing. In fact, she said I was 1 cm dilated and 80% effaced. (I suspect the effacement numbers are rather subjective.) So yeah. They haven’t done anything. I’m at exactly the same spot I was a month ago and there is no sign that I’m going to give birth any time soon. I think she didn’t strip my membranes because I wasn’t “ripe” enough. (Although I am having the fun of crampiness and discomfort, so maybe she did strip ’em and it just hurt less than last time.)

At least the baby is at -1. (That means his head really is in the birth canal — ready to go. See also: I have to spread my legs in order to bend down.)

She decides not to send me in for an NST because the heart rate is fine and I’m not looking imminent and there’s no reason to think there’s anything wrong. There really isn’t.

So I decide on some retail therapy. There’s a Linens ‘N Things going out of business right across the street. Surely I can find something I need on sale. Or at least can find a roundabout way of justifying purchasing.

The sale sucks. The prices are all way more than I’m willing to spend. 10% off is not a great sale.

Then I go to Staples. At least I can get a new keyboard.

They don’t sell the split keyboards I use anymore — they only have these weird humpy very expensive keyboards now. While I probably could expense it, why pay more for something I like less? I notice they have also stopped making/selling the mouse I like.

I fail retail therapy. FAIL.

I should probably focus on the bit where everything looks fine with my baby and even in a worst case I only have to work for another 4 days and maybe one of these days I actually will give birth and my husband and I are both gainfully employed and we have no risk of losing the house and my son is adorable and healthy. These are all true and good things.

But waaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

38 weeks pregnant and needs more coffee

So I had my 38 week checkup today. Of course, I’m at the point in the pregnancy where I’m like, “I’m 38 weeks and TWO DAYS” as if those two days were critically important to understanding just how damn LONG I’ve been PREGNANT ALREADY.

I swear that the first time around I had weekly pelvic exams starting at about 32 weeks and every week I’d find out that I was exactly the same as last week and I got sort of in the habit of getting nekkid etc. I can’t say I’m disappointed, but apparently my memory sucks or things have changed. Not only did I get to keep my clothes on again this week, but apparently I don’t have to doff them until 40 weeks. Oh, and we rescheduled my 41 week appointment so that it happens on a day where she’s on call that evening.

I think she is wildly optimistic. She stripped my membranes (and no, I’m not going to explain what that means, but yes it’s just as much fun as it sounds) TWICE last time to NO AVAIL. But hey. It’s not like I have other big plans for that Monday. Except Linens ‘n Things is apparently going out of business and they’re totally right across the street. So this might all work out in my favor.

I confess — I’m not really sure why they want to see me so often when all they do is take my weight (don’t wanna talk about it), check my pee, take my blood pressure and measure my fundus. (I think that’s the right word. But it seems like the sort of word that it would be _BAD_ if I was close but not quite on in my usage.) Pretty much all of that could be done from the comfort of my own home, if I got someone else to look at the scale because I can’t see it because my belly is too big but I’m not sure this is a bad thing.

Ahem.

On the “my memory sucks” part of the argument, I was attempting to reassure a friend last night that although I am a figurative ticking time bomb, the “ticks” go on for long enough to run for cover. He brought up the quintessential scene of water breaking and I said that while that was a valid fear, I didn’t actually remember my water breaking with Grey.

At this point my husband pipes up to tell me that my water was broken while I was in labor. I totally and completely remember absolutely NONE of this. I mean, I thought I remembered labor pretty well: refusing to take the elevator to labor and delivery because I’d always taken the stairs, the skeptical look on the nurses face when a first time mom claims she’s in transition, the stuff they were storing in the tub where I wanted to labor, the unfair period where they wanted to take a “strip” to measure how the baby was doing, how they couldn’t get the remote monitors to work, how I fell asleep between contractions in the tub, how one simple request on my part clued them in that I was ready to push, the jokes I made between pushing, how my midwife appeared at the nick of time, the very unreasonable things I was asked to do at that point, the bit where my husband kept TOUCHING ME, both of us refusing to look at what was going on, Grey’s actual birth, the part where I had to bully A. into taking pictures of his newborn son which he didn’t want to do it was all “gross”, and the rather unpleasant few minutes that followed. I remember all of this. I do not remember anyone at any point breaking my water. Did they ask me? Did they need to? Don’t you think that’s the sort of thing that would, you know, make an impression? How long between when they broke my water and when I gave birth? It HAS to have been after I got out of the tub, but I was like pushing at that point. Doesn’t your water sort of need to break before you push?

The mind boggles.

I’ve thought of having some sort of countdown, but it’s rather too depressing. It’s not so bad with my due date — B minus 12 days! But then when you add in the 14 days I’ll agitate to go past due, well… let’s just say that I’m not sure I can maintain my sang froid (or my permanent wave — only family members will get that allusion) for another 26 days. TWENTY SIX DAYS. That’s like, forever. That’s like as many days as there are between December 1st and Boxing Day. People write novels in less time.

My husband said to me last night, as he worked the levers on the crane to lower me into bed, “I’m really looking forward to when you’re not pregnant anymore.” I shot him the look of doom and he hurried on, “I mean, I feel badly for your discomfort and how you hurt all the time and how difficult it seems.” I looked skeptical. “Also, I really hate your belly pillow and want to sleep on my right side again.” Light was shed. See, people? It’s not just me who’s sick of it all. Think of A. and how much of the bed the body pillow takes up. It’s all just unfair. Should he really be asked to put up with the bed interloper for 26 more days?

Baby not measuring to dates

So I’m about as easy and vanilla a maternity patient as you can find. My blood pressure today was 116 over 81. My weight gain is normal (if perhaps a little donut-enhanced). All my tests (for strep, yeast infections, etc.) came back negative. I do not have gestational diabetes. My birth history is uncomplicated. My overall health is excellent. The baby’s heartbeat has been at 140 – 144 bpm every single appointment since the first heartbeat was spotted at 10 weeks. He’s very active. I don’t smoke, have pre-existing health problems, genetic predispositions to health problems, or any other complication. I’m well within the age range for not worrying. If there was a woman out there who could probably skip most prenatal care without harm, it’s me. I’d be fine so far this pregnancy, without a single medical intervention.

Do you hear a rant coming on?

There are a few things you do in the last month nearly every exam:
1) Pee in a cup (to check for protein — a sign of preeclampsia)
2) Take your blood pressure (also a preeclampsia check)
3) Check your weight (mmmmm donuts….)
4) Check the baby’s heartbeat
5) Measure the size of the baby.
6) Answer any questions you might have.

Step #5 is done with a little tape measurer. You lie down and the practitioner takes the tape and measures from the crease that starts in my case right below my boobs, over my belly button and to my pelvic bone. (Hurts when she presses down on it.) After like 14 weeks or something there’s a 1 to 1 correlation between number of weeks and the centimeters on the tape, so at 28 weeks the bump should be 28 cm. Convenient like that.

For the last 37 weeks of my pregnancy there has been NO MENTION made of the size of the baby. (Although he was the correct size in the very early ultrasounds where size matches dating.) This is my third midwife appointment in the last 4 weeks. The previous two she was gossiping while measuring and nothing came up.

Today she gets this concerned look on her face and asks if I would have an objection to going in for an ultrasound because the baby is measuring small. I pointed out that I fell under the birth weight threshold (at three weeks post due!)

So the upshot is that I have an ultrasound tomorrow to check the sizing on this baby. The thing is… um, so what? (The questions I should’ve asked all come to me as I stand in line for a donut at Starbucks.) What could be wrong with a small baby that we would currently have a chance to do something about? What are you worried about regarding the smallness? Has he been measuring consistently fine and then just failed to grow at all this week? Is that really a cause for concern? Or has he been running further and further behind and I just wasn’t told until she got really worried? Do we think he’s sitting on his umbilical cord? (Heartbeat was just fine…) It sure isn’t that I’m not eating enough. I could understand if he was measuring large — we might want to see if he would still fit and maybe induce labor a bit early to avoid a c-section if there was a doubt about him being too big. I just fail to see what is gained by knowing he’s small. I mean, if he runs the risk of being low birthweight, the best thing to do is carry him for as long as possible, which is exactly what I plan on doing anyway (not that I have much say).

And to be quite honest, I’m not sure he is all that small. I think he may be smaller than his brother (who was 7 lbs 11 oz and 20.5 inches — on the tall side, perfectly normal for weight), but he just presents differently. Maybe he was stretched out. My tummy definitely bulges to the right side instead of in the middle. (He’s sort of lying on his side — his butt is on the right side of my belly and his hands/arms/legs poke towards the left side of my belly. He’s head down.)

But because now I’m worried/wanna know what’s up I will present myself as requested at 1 pm tomorrow to have the, uh, 5th ultrasound for this pregnancy? (Ok, one or two of those definitely had to do with me being worried after my pair o’ miscarriages, and then the whole “short cervix” debacle but still…)

The worst part is that I see a *midwife* in part because I do not think I require that much medical care and because I am a non-interventionist patient. Is she just a very interventionist midwife, or would I be getting even MORE procedures with an OB/GYN? I’m really healthy! I could have this baby in the bathtub, if someone would throw in a few stitches afterwards! It doesn’t get easier than me!

In other obnoxious news, it is recommended that pregnant women get flu shots. If I get a shot now, it will protect both me and the baby for the flu season. (Which is good — you’d rather not give the baby his own shot.) So wouldn’t you think that my midwife/OBGYN would have access to the flu shot, which does not have a shortage this year?

Nooooooo….

She says I should see my PCP. Fine. My PCP is just down the hall. I drop in with fantasies of a “sure, sit right here and we’ll just jab you right now”. I mean, they do flu shots at Walgreens. How hard can it be.

Well, they have a flu clinic on the 27th (a day past my due date!) and they can’t give any shots before then. This is not helpful. I want the shot while the baby is internal, kthx.

So now I need to find a Walgreens or some place that has a clinic before then. Really, does following health recommendations need to be this hard?

GRUMP!