16 weeks

LAZY THOUGHT BUBBLES POST

• Things are still chugging along here.  I'm feeling ...well....HUGE.  Seriously.  It's out of control.  Not a ton of weight gain but I'm so firmly into maternity clothes it's not even funny.  At 16 weeks.  I can't figure it out.  I was barely - and I mean barely - showing at this point with A2 ..and not at all with the golden child. 
• Baby A2 turned 2 (two!?!?) last week.  We had a really, really good time and celebrated over 2 days.  He thoroughly enjoyed everything about the birthday celebration ...especially the Elmo and Cookie Monster cake pops and blowing out candles.  Seventy four times blowing out candles.  So much fun.
• We had the kids wear "oldest" and "middle" child shirts to the birthday party and finally came out of the closet to my family.  They felt mildly silly when I pointed out that I was wearing maternity clothes.
• I'm not even kidding when I say that waiting 16 weeks to tell family (including my mom!) gave me a new understanding of how women and teens try to hide their pregnancies.  Every day that went by made me more reluctant to tell people and more worried about what their reactions would be.  I made myself sick with anxiety about it on the morning of the party ....and then everything was fine.
• No more bleeding for now ...though I've had some pretty intense cramping on a couple of days.  I remain pretty nervous ....actually, very nervous. 
• I'm still so. freaking. short of breath.  It's to the point now where it significantly limits my activity. I talked to a cardiologist that I work pretty closely with about it and he dragged me up to his office for an echocardiogram right away yesterday while I was at work.  I was about ready to throw up waiting for the tech to put the ultrasound on me.  About half way through the test, the cardiologist walked in the room to tell me what he was seeing.  This was bad for a couple of reasons:
• A doctor I work with every single day walked in to see me laying on a cart topless with naked disgusting I just breastfed for 2 years and now I'm pregnant again boobs.  I don't know that he'll ever recover from that image.
• Him giving me a play by play of what he was seeing was not nearly as reassuring as you would think it would be. He told me right away that my ejection fraction was normal - which WAS a huge relief.   It was what I was worried most about.  No evidence of pregnancy induced cardiomyopathy.  Then he says to the tech, "Is that real?"  to which she responds, "Not sure yet."  And then I committed myself to an inpatient psychiatric ward.  The end.  No seriously ...he thought that he saw a significant anomaly in the septal wall of my heart but wanted to confirm after the test was done.  I was on late shift this week, so he came down to find me in the ER around 11 p.m. and said he wanted a couple of extra images.  I nearly pooped my pants.  In the end - everything turned out fine.  He thinks it's a normal variant when he got the extra pictures, but wants to follow up after pregnancy.  Umm.. Geezus.  It was a nerve wracking couple of hours.
• Now we just sit back and wait.  Next ultrasound in a few weeks....should find out gender.  Still waiting for the results of the NT scan.  We won't even go there yet. 
• How's everything with all of you??  I suck at commenting...mostly because I can read blogs at work but get blocked from commenting by the censors.  Incredibly annoying.  I'm working on it ...I promise.

Relief.

I went in for an ultrasound/OB appointment on Tuesday.  Baby looks good.  Flip flopping all around.  It's so weird to have ultrasounds this frequently ....he/she totally looks like a baby now.  Like ...a baby baby instead of a blob.  Crazy.  The SCH is still there but tiny.  My placenta is lying directly on top of my cervix ...so at this point the OB is not sure if the continued bleeding is from the SCH or from the placenta.  In either case, I get to continue with weekly appointments and every other week ultrasounds.  And pelvic rest.  Seriously.  The pelvic rest is killing me.  Not to mention Monk.

I opted for the NT scan integrated two step test instead of amnio ...we'll see what kind of wreck that makes me.  I completely forgot to ask if there was a nasal bone present.  The NT measurement was 1.4 ...and seriously, I was ecstatic for like an hour over that.  As if it meant it guaranteed a perfectly healthy living baby 6 months from now ecstatic.  I tend to think that the blood draw will increase my risk again ...but I guess I'll deal with that bridge when I come to it.

Baby A's mood/temperament went completely back to normal on my 3rd day home from work ...so I'm still thinking that it was a get your butt home kind of communication.  He still uses his siren song whine, but in short intervals and clearly to express his displeasure in something (having to take a bath before we go to the park, etc.).

I'm struggling at work, lately.  I've gone through this periodically throughout my career, and it usually passes on it's own but this is a particularly difficult round.  I spend the majority of my time in a tiny little dictation room in the ER.  The dictation room is directly across the hall from a "consult room" where they put families that have loved ones that are critically ill so that we can go and talk to them.  Unfortunately, they also use it for a dead body viewing room if someone dies in the ER.  It's uncomfortable, at best, because you end up trying to work 3 feet away from a family at the height of grief/shock ...there is usually wailing, screaming, sometimes violence.  Very, very uncomfortable.  Last week, there was a major accident on one of the nearby highways involving 10 cars and a 5 year old died.  I sat and listened to a mother wail for 3 hours before I lost it myself and had to leave.  Yesterday, a 20 year old came in after overdosing on a new - legal - street drug. 

I can't figure out how to deal with the emotion of it all appropriately in this little space.

Guilt.

Surprisingly enough, I worked all six of my 12 hour shifts.  It'll actually end up being the biggest single paycheck of my life to date.  It's taking everything I have to store it away in a maternity leave fund and not shop til I drop for my entire 5-6 days off.  Yikes.  The bleeding completely stopped during my stretch of work ..and I thought ...yayayay.  Then I was home for a single day and it started again.

Baby A2 is going through a really difficult phase right now.  I'm not sure if I should blame it on me being gone for too long during that work stretch or some other quickly approaching milestone that I'm not paying attention to.  He sounds like a broken siren all day.  He literally whines/cries nearly the entire day for umm...no particular reason that I can figure out.  He's always been a super happy mellow little thing.  This is totally throwing me for a loop.  One of his favorite things (besides the zoo and the park) is to go out to eat.  Loves it.  Totally sociable, engages the waitress, gets excited about the food.  We went out twice yesterday because we were out of town and umm.   Holy disaster.  As in ...ohmygod.  How freaking embarrassing??  At the mall, we passed by the pretzel place and he literally threw himself on the ground shrieking "HOT NUMMIES!!  HOT NUMMIES!!"  which um.  Okay.  If I thought it would have helped, I would have bought him a stinking pretzel.  But it clearly was not going to help.  What was helpful, however,  was the lady that walked by and commented that he was a wretched brat.  To which I replied, "Yeah ..well.  We all have our days."  And seriously.  I know he'll be 2 in a few weeks and this is likely the beginning of what's to come .  I think I must have forgotten how truly awful this stage is ...or I'm missing something big going on with the little guy right now. 

Which brings me to a confession of sorts.  So ..it turns out I was still breastfeeding when I got pregnant.  Not often.  We were down to like once every other day ...but the kid would not give it up.  I was over it.  Like ...over it with a capital O.  He was not so much.  At all.  And then, as soon as I got pregnant, nursing was extraordinarily uncomfortable.  Psychologically, physically, the whole bit.  And I sort of cut him off cold turkey.  As cold turkey as you can get when you're already on an every other day schedule.  But this crazy behavior makes me think that he wasn't ready.  He still asks to nurse 3 or 4 times every. single. day.  And mostly, if he's not asking to nurse?  He's got his hand down my shirt feeling me up.  Feeling anyone up, really.  My mom watches him while monk and I are at work, and the two of them have a very close bond.  The other day I was getting ready to leave, and I hear him ask her to nurse him.  She busted out laughing.  The poor little thing.  I think he feels abandoned or something.

Mommy guilt.  Somehow, it's always going to be something I did wrong.