Nearing the end.

I don't know why it comes as a surprise to me that I suck at keeping my blog updated.  But yes.  I do, in fact, royally suck at blogging.

The end of this pregnancy is near.  C-section is scheduled for Friday at 3 p.m. if lungs are mature after amnio.  Holy crap. 

I just got out of Triage.  I felt close to no fetal movement for the entire day and eventually felt nervous enough to go in.  His heart rate was only 110 when I got there.  They promptly woke him up and everything looked good.  AFI was on the low end of normal - so I'm back for daily NSTs an BPP's until delivery.  I was supposed to work this week . . . but I guess not.  Which is good.  I'll stay home, cuddle the 2 year old, and drink lots of water.   I continue to have runs of false labor - lasting for a few hours and then it will stop.  We're woefully unprepared to have this little one enter our lives ... but it'll work out.

I'm still super worried about a post-partum hormone crash.  I put everyone on high alert to watch me after delivery.  Other than that ...anxiety seems to be fairly under control.  Except see above triage visit.   Ha.  I still delude myself pretty well, apparently.

Wish me luck.  Here goes nothing.

Three Years

Three years ago today, I wrote this post:

Trick or Treat

If you had told me then that those three years would have turned into this:

And this:

Plus an additional 34 week from all appearances healthy pregnancy -

I would have told you that you were insane.

Sometimes - life is too sweet.



Favorite Things

My favorite things about this week

• Somehow nearly everyone in my practice (more than 20 people) managed to tell me that I look like I'm ready to explode at any second.
• Anytime someone spills something in the office, they blame my water breaking.
• On the same day someone told me I was huge, another doc (not in our practice, but whom I work closely with) said, "Ohmygod ..you're pregnant!  I had no idea!" 
• I actually made it in and out of my NST in 35 minutes today with a reactive baby
• I got pulled over TWICE on the way home from work tonight.  
• I left work early yesterday and today because of contractions.  So when I started crying and told the cop(s) that I was contracting and got out of the ordeal without a ticket ...it was without lying.  I think they were afraid they might have to deliver me and promptly sent me on my way without a ticket.
• My OB took me off work AGAIN at my appointment today. 
• I've been having awful dizzy I'm going to pass out spells which I was telling her about during my exam.  I sat up when she was finished and promptly passed out on her table.  I believe in real life examples, I guess. Scared the living daylights out of her and the rest of the office.  I'm 99% sure the passing out and dizziness is because this breech baby keeps sticking his body parts into my aorta and/or inferior vena cava and blocks my blood supply.
• I promptly returned to work immediately after she told me no more working.  I did, however, agree to reduce my hours and promised to stop if I pass out again.
• Baby A2 is going to be a dinosaur for Halloween and couldn't be cuter or more excited about it.
• Baby A2 is going to Sesame Street Live tomorrow with my mom and I.  You might already know this because he has broadcast it to the world in general every 30 seconds since I told him about it yesterday.  I forgot how incredibly excited a 2 year old could be.  The tickets were $100 and I'm thinking we might actually even end up going twice in the same weekend.  Because seriously.  The kid is excited.
• The golden child,in all seriousness, asked me to buy her a "slutty" Halloween costume and described it as such.  Ummm.
• The irony of raising a toddler, a newborn, and a teenager all at the same time is still not lost on me.  Perhaps overwhelming.  But full of conflicting needs and fun.

And just like that ...it changed

So a week or two after that last post ....everything changed.  I don't know if there was some weird hormonal switch (my guess) or if I have some wonky pregnancy auto-immune craziness going on (what the overly intellectual internal med docs I spend my days with think) but I went back to feeling nomal.   No more crazy hatred towards Monk for unreasonable things and no more crazy emotional lability.  Coincidentally, my blood sugars also got way easier to manage.  Initially - they plummeted.  Plummeted to the point that I had several episodes of hypoglycemia and took myself completely off insulin and metformin.  Then they were normal for a couple of days without meds ...and then I slowly crept back to needing some insulin - but was also able to eat and stay in range.  Very much a relief.  Whatever the cause.  I did have some temporary freak outs when everything changed - it was very similar to what happened right before I went into labor with A2.  But here we are a couple of weeks later and he's still on the inside.

I'm back to twice weekly NSTs - which have only been dramatic twice so far.  On Friday, his heartrate was non-reactive for several hours.  He was active and moving a ton - but his heart rate wasn't accelerating as required.   While I was waiting for the OB to come and look at the strips and do a biophysical profile ultrasound, it occurred to me that this kid could potentially be taken out of me at any given NST appointment.  And ..holy cow I'm not ready.  No name.  No cord blood kit.  No diapers in the appropriate size.  No take me home outfit. 

You'd think the last 6 days I've had off from work would have given me some motivation to get that stuff done ...but it turns out ...umm  no.

Yikes.

Unbalanced

I honestly can't believe it's been a month since I've posted.  If I don't get a handle on this time thing pretty soon, I'm going to be sitting here with a newborn that I'm completely unprepared for.

This pregnancy has thrown me for a complete loop emotionally.  I'm an angry, rageful, crying, out-of-control witch.  The hormone swings are intolerable to me - much less my poor loved ones that are forced to live with me.  The only one that has been spared is the two year old, really.  To be honest, Monk takes the lion's share.  Why he hasn't left me is completely beyond me.  And quite frankly, sometimes I feel like I'm pushing him to make that decision.  Which is really strange - because I feel like I'm living duplicate lives at the same time.  The old rational me is still there watching over the reactions and decisions that the hormonal witch is making and just letting her run wild and use the excuse of hormones.  It's ridiculous.  As bad as it is - it feels temporary.  Like ...don't fight it too much because this too shall pass.  In a matter of 9 weeks or so now...I'm hoping it's done and over with.  I feel like I'm on the brink - maybe passed the brink on some days - of really experiencing true mental illness.   What absolutely terrifies, me, however, is that I feel like I'm speeding right towards a massive case of post partum depression.  My hormone switch has NEVER been even close to being this far off balance and I'm not sure what I'm going to be looking at when they pull the baby out and all the hormones come crashing down around me.  For the first time, I've felt tempted to start on medication as a pre-emptive strike.  And then the blaring reality of birth defects and side effects snaps me back into reality and I neglect to discuss it at my OB appointments.

Things on the physical front still suck too ....I still can NOT flipping breathe if I do anything.  Climbing a flight of stairs leaves me so short of breath and exhausted that I have to sit and rest.  A load of laundry is enough to do me in.  And getting the baby and myself showered and primped for the day typically happens right before nap.  Because I have to nap after such a grand effort.  To continue my life's predisposition for really bad timing, my job is changing significantly and I am now required to be much, much more physically active.  As in walking.  At break neck speeds.  All over the flipping place.  I wore a pedometer the other day - and with me moving as slow as I do compared to my counterparts, I still walked 7 miles in one 12 hour shift.  I come home from work in a near coma with my pelvis feeling dislocated.  I have a whole lot of time off built into my schedule now ...stretches of 5 or 6 days off every couple of weeks ...and I need every one of them to recover.  The pelvic pain hasn't been nearly as severe with this pregnancy as it was the last ...and it actually goes away completely when I'm off work ...but my god ..when it's there, every single step is excruciating. 

And ...of course ...I'm diabetic again.  Which, although I was fully anticipating it, is really seriously pissing me off.  My blood sugars have not been nearly as easy to control this time around despite a multi dose regimen including 6-7 shots of insulin per day.  I need massive doses of insulin in the morning even if I don't eat - and close to none at dinner.  All part of the raging hormones that are throwing me for a loop in every way, I guess.  I feel incredibly guilty every time I have an out of range blood sugar - even if it's only 10 points out of range, and because of that, I'm trying to eat close to nothing.  I've lost 6 pounds in the week and a half since diagnosis ...which I don't think is good either.

I'm a mess.  Straight up ...all the way around.  A mess.   We have no prep done for the baby.  We haven't even started moving baby A2 towards a new schedule that will give us some kind of sanity with 2 little ones.  I don't have a name or any idea of a name that might sound good.  I have no sleeping space arranged.  No second crib.  No double stroller.  No idea where to move most of A2's toys to make room for all the "stuff" that's required for A3.  ARRRRGH.

Sixteen

My baby girl, the one who taught me how to be a mom and forever changed my world, turns 16 in two days.

She passed her road test, which means that in two days, she will inherit my Prius and enter a world full of infintely more freedom. 

Be careful out there, baby girl.  Pleae be careful with your heart ...and mine.

Fatigue.

Holy crap.  I'm tired.  Like ...The idea of using my arm to lift baby A2's arms up and take his shirt off to put his pajama's on tonight is overwhelming.  Between that and still not being able to breathe when I exert myself at all ...I'm getting a whole lot of nothing done.  I also have insane restless legs syndrome and pica (there's not an ice cube in the state that's safe from me) - both of which are signs of iron deficiency.  So ..I'm half thinking there's some anemia contributing to the fatigue.  Anemia and iron deficiency would make sense to me since I came into the pregnancy straight after a year of continuous uterine bleeding and was still breastfeeding.  I'll get labs done next Wednesday, and I've upped my iron intake in the meantime.

Okay.  Can I just tell you that this 2 year old is running me ragged??  I have never known a child to have sooo much energy.  He is so much fun I can't stand it.  He's already a stand up comedian and spends most of his day trying to crack people up.  He gets into everything.  We take turns exercising the baby.  As in ..."Umm..it's your turn to run A2.  I've already done it for 2 hours."  We let him out back and he literally runs around the yard at breakneck speed until I die of exhaustion from watching him.  He's like a dog that requires a 10 mile walk before you can expect appropriate behavior out of him.  I live in Michigan which means that winter will be here soon.  I'm currently trying to figure out how to fit his trampoline into the basement so we can bounce him.  Like Tigger.  Which brings me to this point:  I have a huge yard that is beautifully fenced in.  Behind the fence is a massive field full of deer, snakes, and wild animals.  Although I feel like he's safe back there, I virtually never let him outside even for a second alone because well ..he's 2.  Anyway.  We were inside watching Dora this evening when I started this post.  Monk was out front cutting the grass and the golden child was upstairs.  I got up to pee ...came back to the living room to find no baby and no dog.  Looked everywhere.  Nothing.  Panicked.  Looked at the sliding door which was wide open.  And then to my horror, I discovered that Monk had left the gate in the back of the yard open to the field when he was cutting the grass.  A2 was strolling around in grass taller than him with our cocker spaniel tailing close behind.  I nearly died.  And then Monk nearly died an untimely death for leaving the gate open.  Holy shit.  I think I lost 14 years of my life in those 2 minutes.  I'm still trying to figure out what to do with a 2 year old that suddenly figured out how to open a door.  While I was peeing.  He should figure these things out while adequately supervised.

I'm already starting to panic ...because ohmygod ...it feels like this baby is going to be here in 2 minutes and I have not even slightly begun to prepare in any way, shape, or form.  Much less started my Christmas shopping.  And the golden child turns 16 in 2 weeks and I believe is probably expecting some sort of MTV style 16th birthday party .... and isn't going to get it.   Ayiyiyi.

I feel like I'm probably going through a normal developmental stage of adding another human being to our family ...but I'm so emotionally torn I can't even tell you which way I'm headed.  It breaks my heart that my relationship with A2 is going to change so much.  That I will come home from the hospital and my baby will suddenly have grown at least 6 feet.  I worry about how he'll handle it.  I worry about how I'll handle it.  I worry about the golden child ...and her needs getting pushed farther to the back of the line than they are now.  And my relationship with my husband ...what happens to that?  When do we make time for one another between work and 3 kids?  How can I possibly handle getting 2 to bed at the same time??  I honestly think that the first 2 were 13 years apart because seriously ...that's all I could handle.  I have no idea how to manage two very needy little people at the same time.  No idea at all.   

I read a beautiful post today @  http://sharah.wordpress.com/ and cried for nearly 2 hours afterward.  Because ...yeah.  Right there with ya, Sharah.  Right there.