Difficult Conversations

Today (I guess yesterday now) was Matt's daughter's birthday. When I first met him and we became friends, he was in a relationship with his ex, and they had a daughter on the way. Shortly after she was born, they broke up. He doesn't get to see her anymore, and it's a complicated situation. She is 6 now. I know that around this time, he tends to get a little depressed and I think it might be affecting things with the baby on the way. He hasn't seemed to really be interested in much of anything to do with Lorelai. He's still rubbing my belly and he told her goodbye before he went to work today, but we were at his mom's house looking through some of the clothes we were handed down by one of his cousins and he sat in the corner and played games. Even his mom commented about his apparent lack of interest. I don't know if it's just me and my hormones, but while he doesn't necessarily seem uncaring about the baby coming, something just seems off and I wonder if it has to do with thinking of his daughter and the depression that can bring. I don't really know how to bring it up, though, or if it even needs to be brought up.

Huzz-ah!

The nursery is complete. I want to wait for the morning to take pictures with natural light, but here's a sneak peek at the room.

The wall by the changing table is decorated with the Dr. Who/Disney mashups by Karen Hallion.

She showed a preview on Facebook of the Mulan one that she's working on and of course we'll be getting it when it becomes available.

And now, it's late, it's dark, it's time to turn off the lights and slip into sleep under the stars. Maybe if we're lucky a big beautiful blue box will come to take us away.

Disappointments

Today we went in early for my NST, and like always Lorelai reacted well. She's head down once more, and I'm hoping she stays that way. For the love of god, child, you are not an acrobat. I had Centering next, and found out that I am one of only three of our group that is still pregnant. So we had a mini-Centering where we talked and had our assessments. They told us that since there were only three of us, the MFMs wouldn't be coming downstairs, but that we would go upstairs. So upstairs we went and I got to sit for an entire hour waiting to be seen. HURRAH.

I saw the doctor for a few brief minutes where he looked over my blood sugar logs, made a note of my current insulin dosage, and I asked about the induction date because we are about two weeks away from when I'd been told would be the time of relative induction and we're anxious to make sure that Matt has that day and the next few off work. He didn't want to set a day today, but said that it would likely occur in a week at my next prenatal visit when they would do a cervical check to see if I'm dilating/effaced yet. I may get the induction date on Friday if she's measuring too small.

So there's a week left to wait before we find out when that deadline for pregnancy is.

I realize that if they set the date today it wouldn't be any sooner than if they set it next week, and I'm not terribly anxious to give birth. I just want to know. You know, so I can obsessively plan and count down weeks, days, hours, and minutes. As I do.

However, I'm going to focus on the good. The kiddo is head down, and I got to do my own Group B strep swab, meaning that no strangers were allowed to come near my junk with Q-tips. Now I am going to tuck myself into bed for a nap, and after dinner head over to my mother-in-law's house.

Well that was a bad idea.

Lately I've been feeling neglected in the lovin' department. Matt hasn't seemed interested in initiating any sexy time, or gotten the hints when I've tried to say, "Hey, let's engage in good old fashioned crazy monkey sex." Maybe I'm just not blunt enough, but when it got to the point where I was dry humping his shin, I would have thought the point would have gotten across.

This morning when he got home from class, he gave me a backrub and lots of kisses and well...

And that was possibly a terrible idea, because now I'm having contractions. I'm fairly certain it's just false labor pain again, but I am a little worried because about half an hour to an hour after we had gotten dressed and gone about our lives, my digestive system started acting up, and it's pretty common anywhere from a day to a week before labor for the body to start flushing out waste. HUR HUR HUR.

So now I'm throwing back water and laying with my feet up. Being not pregnant anymore is an attractive thought, I will admit, but she isn't allowed to come just yet. At the very least wait one more week! Preferably all three.

Done with today

Today hasn't been the best. I found out today that my therapist is moving to another practice. There are still two months before she goes, and we talked minimally about options for my continuation when she moves. To be honest, I've built a rapport with her, and find it discomforting to think of talking to someone else. One thing she suggested for when my time with her ends is that perhaps Matt and I could seek out couple's therapy together, after I talked at length about my anger and frustrations, and a lot about the way I've felt lately.

After therapy, I was moody, uncomfortable, and cold. I snapped at Matt, he got upset and we ended up fighting and brooding in Carytown.

The last print I'm waiting on for the nursery hasn't come in still. If it's not in by tomorrow, I need to contact the artist. She said that the large prints tend to come in a day or two after the other prints. Hopefully it didn't get lost in the mail.

I'm still stressed about just how behind I am in genetics. There's a real possibility that I won't get a C, and we'll be using Matt's tax return money to pay for my class. That's depressing.

My Leave of Absence request for school was denied because the document didn't accept my electronic signature. It's an easy fix - I just have to print it out and sign it manually and then scan and e-mail it back, but it was depressing to get the denial letter and freak out for thirty minutes before I got in touch with my financial counselor to find out why/what needed to be done.

I'm just finished with today and everything about it. I'm thinking about dragging Matt off to Walmart to get The Avengers on blu ray so that I can console myself with my Hulk feels.

Anger Management

I've been off my Prozac for about a week now. At first it wasn't intentional. I had a few days where I was so busy that I forgot to take it, and then when I realized that I hadn't been taking it I started wondering if I've gotten to the point where I'm okay without it. So I just didn't take it further. And well, it's possible that was a bad idea. I've just been getting more frustrated and angry with Matthew as the week has gone on. I feel a lot like Stitch.

It could be the stress from class. I'm in my last week and so far behind, and just completely overwhelmed. I'm exhausted but keep having to leave the house for one thing or another, or being pulled in one direction or another, and I just can't focus or even attempt to get anything done. I'm panicking, I don't want to fail. Is it just this extreme stress, and should I wait out another week to when my leave of absence from the University starts? Or should I go back on medication and not try again for a while to come off of it?

Blarg. In the meantime, I just want to hit something.

Also, this baby is transverse this week. Please, Lorelai, will you just turn your head downwards and stay that way? Goddamn.

Showered

Today was my baby shower. My mother-in-law and aunts-in-law (Is that a thing? Now it is.) hosted it at my MIL's house and it was perfect. Not a ton of people, about 11, and a lot of fun. We opened presents and ate, talked, and laughed a lot. It was nice to be surrounded by family and friends, though I felt guilty that I couldn't do much to help despite the fact that I was explicitly told not to. Ha ha.

I was completely spoiled, by everyone. :) And now to collect addresses so that I can start writing out thank you cards. It was incredibly fantastic to feel just how loved my daughter and I are by the people who came to celebrate with us.

I also absconded with an amazing amount of fruit and pepperjack cheese so tonight I am snacking like nobody's business while I finish up laundry. :D PEPPERJAAAACK!

I gave Tonie and Lori beach themed yummy smelling things as hostess gifts, and spent the better part of Saturday searching the city for a March birthstone pendant for Joy. I told her I wasn't sure if she liked thin or thicker chains so I still needed to take her out to choose a chain for the necklace. :)

I also got seriously lucky because I was looking for hours for a pendant like this and when I finally found it at Kohls, they were getting rid of their birthstone pendants like this and I got it with a $70 discount, so I have more monies to make sure that the chain we buy for her is a nice one. :)

Shifting gears

This week in therapy I think I made a bit of a breakthrough, though it didn't come immediately. I spent most of the session yesterday talking about our pets, and when she brought up the baby, I mentioned that I hadn't really been too worried about the baby this week. I'm feeling her move again, and I'm not worried about labor and stillbirth as I have been. I've had a lot of other stress, and a lot of depressive thoughts, but nothing revolving around Lorelai. When I said this, she smiled and I didn't think too much of it. Before our session ended, she said that next time we would talk more about how my designated anxiety time has been.

And that's when I realized that this week I hadn't done that very much. I just hadn't thought of going into my little corner and worrying.

It's refreshing to think that I've been able to let go of my anxiety surrounding stillbirth, or at least not let it be as consuming as it had been. I had feared and honestly been convinced that the closer we got to my due date, the worse the nightmares and anxiety would become. I'm not sure if it's the work that I've done with my therapist that's given me the tools to keep my worry levels to a realistic intensity rather than this looming, all-encompassing thing, or if it's just a natural side effect of having everything go so smoothly. Either way, it's nice.

Another change that seems to have come about this week is the baby dropping a bit. I don't see much change in the way I'm carrying her, but other people have commented. I mostly feel it differently. There's a lot of pressure in my cervix, almost like a constant gentle cramp. I ache in new places, I pee every five minutes, and I'm exhausted. I'm relieved that I'll be induced so that there's a deadline there and no way that I'll be waiting and waiting with no end in sight as my due date comes and goes. Ha ha. However, I really don't want her to come early. Mostly because of her small size, she needs all the time she can get to grow without the responsibility of breathing and eating getting in the way. So four weeks, baby. You and me, it's a date.

Adjustments

I noticed today that I'm automatically arching my back to correct my balance now. This is possibly why I waddle these days. Ha ha.

35 and 35

Today I am 35 weeks along, with 35 days to go to my due date. Holy moley! Ha ha. I spent the entire hour of therapy talking about my pets. We had to euthanize one of our fish this week. It wasn't as traumatic to me as losing a rat, probably because it's harder to get attached to the fish in the same way, but it was still tough. It took me a long time to get to sleep the night after because the house smelled of clove oil. Not having him in the tank is tough too. He was a pain in the ass, but damn he was pretty.

I engaged in some retail therapy for the remaining fish and used some of this nesting energy to completely re-do the tank. We have LED lights in there now, which is arguably pretty awesome.

I need to pick up some suction cups to get the cords out of the way better. The remaining fish seem to be doing okay without Bebop, though I was really only ever worried about Rocksteady because she and Bebop seemed to be bonded pretty tightly from day one.

Countdowns

It's surreal to think that I have four more weeks left in my pregnancy. Today I had a non-stress test and a prenatal visit. The NST went well. Lorelai was asleep at first so they used the buzzer to wake her and she didn't like that much. She jumped and kicked and threw a tantrum that her nap had been disturbed, which amused the nurse greatly. My amniotic fluid levels are good, and she's head down again. Let's hope she stays that way this time.

I brought up my glucose problems at the prenatal, and we're going to try to drop the bedtime NPH but up my nighttime 70/30 mix to 30 units from 24. Hopefully I don't go low in the middle of the night, and we'll see what happens. Dr. Ramus came by to talk to me and he said that in two weeks at my next prenatal, we'll do my group B strep test and I do believe that either that day (the 27th) or my next ultrasound on the 1st is when I'll be scheduled for my induction.

Sunday is the baby shower. Huzzah. My mother in law was complaining today that I didn't have enough on my registry. Ha ha. I told her she was allowed to get things that weren't on the registry, especially since we had no idea what we were doing when we were registering.

Lonely but never alone

Above we see the wild husband creature in his natural habitat. Having a chronic illness like diabetes and all the monitoring, medication, and frustration, as well as physical side effects (like sugar high headaches) can be lonely when the person you live with doesn't have to deal with the same problems. Sometimes it makes it worse, like when he wants to eat something like pizza, spaghetti, or stir fry that man, I really wan to eat it too, but my disease and my conscious effort to control my disease inhibits. Pregnancy makes these feelings of facing the difficulties of disease alone even more poignant because so often I feel like I'm alone in this too.

Matt doesn't talk much about the baby, or the future. While I know he's excited, he doesn't seem to focus on it the same way I do and it's probably because it's not a constant reminder to him the way it is to me. I can feel Lorelai's movements, I am reminded that she is on the way every morning when I take my prenatals. With every finger stick, I worry that a bad number is affecting her. With every meal, I remind myself that no matter how tired and frustrated I am with these restrictions, I need to stay strong and do my best for her health. My wee hitchhiker is a big responsibility, one that I often feel I carry the weight of alone.

And yet, even in the intense loneliness, I am never really alone. This morning I've been highly frustrated with Matt. He swears up and down that he plans on keeping up with laundry and trash, but the laundry goes undone until I do it or until I hound him. The trash doesn't get taken out until I tell him to do it. Meanwhile, the intense depression I've felt lately has been keeping me from feeling much like doing anything. My desire to clean and organize is being muted by the strong waves of apathy and fatigue that I'm experiencing. The house is going neglected, as well as my homework.

Today everything came to a head and I've been spending most of the morning crying. I feel neglected in the love department, attention deprived. I'm frustrated by his lack of helping with the house and the fact that he said he would spend today studying and immediately began gaming when he woke up, complaining and arguing when I kept telling him he needed to study. After breakfast my numbers were high, and I cried over it. I couldn't think of anything I could eat for lunch that wouldn't spike them again and cried over that. Now we're talking about plans for dinner because I'll be going out to babysit tonight and need to eat beforehand, and it brought more tears. He wants pizza, I just wish that any option I had for low-carb stuff didn't taste like garbage, and I want pizza too but the most I can have is a single slice and I'm hungry, dammit. I'm pregnant for chrissake.

Cue more crying and another anxiety attack.

And then Matt patted my back and pet my hair and helped me look up nutrition information on wings from Pizza Hut so that I can have that single slice of pizza but also chicken and end up with an actual adult amount of food that won't kill me on carbs. He let me cry on the couch and gave me a box of tissues so that I could blow my snotty nose and then gently pat my head again before he went out to grab dinner.

And suddenly I feel a lot better and less lonely. In many ways, I'm still on my own in this. Matt will eat half the pizza or more, and probably have a bowl of ramen while I'm gone today. He won't do laundry, or take out the trash, and as soon as I'm out the door he'll probably stop studying and go back to gaming. Just being gentle and kind while I mope isn't going to suddenly make it to where I'm not the only one who is responsible and tidy. But somehow, it helps, and it reminds me that I do feel lonely in this but even though he doesn't really get it he's still there.

If that makes any sense.

What's the factory warranty?

Can I trade my body in? I'm still struggling with blood sugar, with no apparent reason. I took the NPH last night and my fasting sugars were better this morning, but I also upped my morning insulin dosage by 2 units as well and just had a sandwich for breakfast. I half expected to be close to low when I went to take my post-meal sugar but nope. High, and too high at that. 161. This is completely unacceptable, and beyond frustrating. I don't understand why it's just been this week that my blood sugar has gone completely haywire when it's been fairly reasonable thusfar. Yes, I've been experiencing a higher need for insulin in the 3rd trimester, but it was still reacting as expected. Now, it feels like nothing is working to keep myself on track. I'm depressed, and tomorrow I have an appointment with the high risk clinic.

While I want to talk about this with a doctor, I wish it was a Centering appointment where I would actually be able to talk to a MFM. I hated going to the high risk clinic before Centering started up because I always talked to a different resident doctor, I felt like I wasn't listened to, and it was overall a miserable experience. Centering has been such a breath of fresh air because I actually get to talk to the MFMs or at least Dr. Hill who I believe is a resident but she comes pretty consistently. The consistency has been nice because when I refer to experiences earlier in the pregnancy, they actually know what I'm talking about and are familiar with me. There's also the apprehension involved with the 6th floor clinic because it was there that when I expressed before the holidays that I felt the Prozac wasn't being as effective as I would like that one of the resident doctors asked me, "Can't you find some other way to be happy?" Even though it will only be for one appointment, I really don't want to go back.

I feel defensive about my blood sugars because I'm fighting and doing everything I can to try and control them and they just aren't making sense to me. Possibly because of it, I'm having a lot of problems managing depressive feelings this week. Every high blood sugar is a hit to my self esteem, and every meal is cause for anxiety. I just want my body to work in a way in which I feel I might have at least some modicum of control. Is that too much to ask? I'm tired of fighting like hell and still feeling completely useless at the end of the day.

The battle continues

Yesterday I upped my insulin to 45 units in the morning because of the high numbers I've been having that haven't been able to be explained by what I've ate. It worked well yesterday so I did another 45 units today. I had a sandwich for breakfast. 180 (10.0) two hours later. Unacceptable, and I really can't figure out why it's so high. It's frustrating, so I had a good, long, ugly cry. I'm getting really fed up with my body, with this disease, and with the 70/30 combination insulin. If I were on a fast acting/NPH separate, I could take a dose to bring that number down, instead of sitting here hungry, debating if it's worth it to eat right now or if I should wait another couple of hours to give my numbers a chance to come down. Fuck it, I'm starving. I ate. I can only imagine what my reading will be in another few hours. I'm going to give myself the nighttime dose of separate NPH before bed tonight to see if that helps my morning sugars beyond just the fasting number.

Gettin' real tired of your shit, diabetes.

One Car Household

The bad news is that Matt put a hole in the side of his engine and now we need to find a rebuilt Saturn engine for his car. The estimates that both myself and his dad came up with from looking around are over two thousand dollars. His dad is letting him use their extra car until we get the dash cluster in my car later this week. Once my car's dash problems are solved, we are a one car house. I don't like this idea at all.

For starters, what if I need to get to an appointment while he's working? I'm not terribly concerned with going into labor because I'll be able to call the in-laws, but what about when the baby gets here? It's going to take forever to save up the money for a new engine or buy all the parts to rebuild it ourselves.

I also really don't like being without transportation. Even if I don't go somewhere during the day, just having the car out there and able to drive if I need to is a comfort thing for me. I've rarely been without a vehicle since I turned 16, and when I don't have access to a working vehicle I feel trapped and anxious.

In order to make myself feel better and give myself something fantastic to focus on, I indulged myself in a new game, something we haven't gotten in a long time. I picked up Ni No Kuni: Wrath of the White Witch. It's gotten great reviews as far as I've seen and Studio Ghibli worked on it which is always a plus. Although, considering the story is about a little boy trying to save his mother, I can imagine that I'm setting myself up for a lot of ugly, snot-filled crying episodes.

Stress and Blood Glucose Levels

There have been quite a few studies on stress and the way it affects diabetics. We know that stress is part of our survival instinct, and short term stress releases hormones and begins processes in our body to heighten our responses and fuel us for the wild need of flight or fight. Part of this is fucking with blood glucose. In type II diabetics, stress tends to elevate blood glucose levels. In type I diabetics, the majority also see a rise in blood sugar, but some have the opposite response and go low a lot in times of prolonged stress.

To say that I've been stressed is an understatement. There was the panic of this weekend, followed by immediate anxiety about my own inability to tell when something is genuinely wrong or not. My therapy session on Thursday was rough. It left me emotionally drained, and a stressed-out, irritated, melancholy mess for the rest of the day. Friday was little better, topped off by Matt's car beginning to have trouble and him not getting home from work until an hour and a half late because his replacement didn't know she was on the schedule and didn't show up on time. 

And then came today. Yesterday when Matt's car was misbehaving we made the plan that he would take my car to work because of the long commute until we knew what was wrong with his car. We figured it was just a belt that was loose, but that we wanted to avoid any problems we could. The days have been relatively warm so we hadn't been having trouble with my car. Last night he took my car and it worked out well enough. This morning he went to leave for work, though, and it was cold enough that the dashboard wasn't responding. So Matt made the decision to take his car to work.

Twenty miles down the highway and he said there was a loud bang, a lot of smoke, and he coasted to the side of the road as the engine shut off. That's when he called his parents, got yelled at, and then while he was waiting for his mom to come and give him a ride to work, called me. So that's how I woke up this morning. Ahhh, more stress. Happy stress. Lovely stress.

You guys, I ate a sandwich for lunch yesterday, before all this huge stress really happened. It shot my blood sugar up by 100 points, and yes I had taken my insulin that morning. I am not looking forward to today at all.

My apartment smells like a garage

Today I took the last steps on the shelves and sprayed it down with a sealant suitable both for acrylic paint and mod podge, so we should be good. I did two coats, outside on the back porch so that the fumes wouldn't be in the apartment. I brought it in as soon as it felt dry because it looks a bit like it might rain tonight and I didn't want it to get ruined after having worked on it for the last three days. The smell of the chemicals are really strong on it, so I've got the fan going in the nursery to help keep air moving and get rid of the smell before I start loading it up with toys and books. The inside of the legs were going to be papered but I decided not to just yet. I want to pick up a third paper to do them in so that it's matched on both sides and it can wait for some other time. For now, I'm finished.

The Dalek prints were finished and hung. Now all that's left of my original to do list is to obtain the Karen Hallion prints and get them hung with the plaque, and the embroidered quote piece. I've added a couple of projects since then, but they should be relatively simple. First is the bunting with her name, and also curtains to go over her window. I came across fabric in my stash that I thought would be perfect for the curtains but after I washed it, it shrunk to too small for my use. I think a bright chevron print will be better anyway. I also need to find a lampshade for the wall lamp we recycled from Matt's old room. The shade that was on it was a really ugly burlap beige color and burned in some places where it had sat lopsided on a lightbulb and got too hot.

Also, my baby sister let me know that she wants to come visit in March during her spring break and let me know the dates. She should be here just after Lorelai is born, but for a few days at least I'll have both of my sisters and my best friend here with me. :D Perfection.

The nursery isn't complete, and when it is I'll be using a better camera to take pictures of it, but here's a preview of what I have so far.

The corner with the crib. I need to get a white crib skirt to go on it, although blue or sage green would work as well.

The changing table corner. I'm reminded that I need to sew up a changing pad cover.

Paranoia Agent

Just got back from the hospital. Even though I wasn't feeling any movement, we were picking up movement and a strong heartbeat on the monitor. So she's fine and great in there, but I wasn't feeling it. Which isn't that assuring to me. How am I supposed to know if there's a problem or not? I'm so anxious about this. Ha ha. I felt completely guilty about dragging everyone to the hospital at 11 at night, especially with Matt's parents having to work in the morning and Matt being tired after his shift (he met us at the hospital) although everyone is telling me it's fine and not to feel bad. I just... gah.

Also Lorelai's movements are still not strong enough to be very easily detectible. She's probably going to wait until 4 in the morning and start freaking out in there and I'll never be able to sleep. Punk.

I'm just really glad my tiny little jerkface is okay. Now I'm going to go to sleep so that I can tell my therapist in the morning about how crazy and paranoid I am.

My unborn child is a jerk

All day I've been thinking to myself that Lorelai hasn't been as active as usual. About 40 minutes ago, I noticed that I hadn't felt really any movement in the last hour - which is normally about the time she starts a tiny kick parade. So I ate a big bowl of ice cream, some salsa, and had some Sprite Zero. I figured if I went with the full trifecta of what makes her move (sweet, spicy, carbonation), then I'd get an explosion of movement. Not so much. 6 movements, and all much weaker/smaller than normal. I'm worried. Worried enough that this kid has 20 minutes to go to town on my organs and then I'm calling Labor and Delivery and asking if they think I should come in. I have an NST tomorrow but I'd rather feel silly for going in tonight and being told everything's okay and CALM DOWN LADY than going in the morning and told that something is terribly wrong.

So 20 minutes. Let's see if I can get through it without having any anxiety attacks since I really need to be focusing on movement right now.

Just the two of us, we can make it if we try

My bella band has been worn to the limits of structural engineering and is coming unraveled. Thus, it no longer works to hold my jeans up, and the jeans can only be worn unbuttoned now. So the three pairs of jeans I own are now out of commission. I tried to put on my khaki pants from my Target days, and ha ha. Not happening. So I'm down to sweats and my lone pair of maternity pants, which feel like they don't fit but I realized this morning that it's just because of the unfortunately thick hemming on the back pockets that make it feel like they're sliding down my massive backside. I just tried them on and walked around the apartment and so far so good. So I do have one pair of pants that I can wear in public without looking like a bum.

Although I wonder what my therapist would think if I just started showing up to all our sessions in my pajama pants with a nice blouse. This idea is probably only funny to me.

But either way, for the next five weeks it's just you and me, maternity pants! Don't let me down, bro!

To-Do List

Today I noticed that my phone charger has a USB attachment which means that I may be able to take pictures of the nursery without flooding my friends' Instagram feeds with nursery stuff. I do feel a little guilty that my Instagram is pretty much just baby stuff lately, but it's what I've been working on so....

The nursery itself is almost done, which means that I'll be ready to reveal pictures of the whole thing. Things left to do:

• Paint and paper the toy shelves (I've already sanded, primed, and put the base coat of paint on it so this will get a lot of progress today.)
• Pop-art inspired Dalek paintings finished and hung (This will be finished today.)
• Purchase, mat, and frame Karen Hallion Dr. Who/Disney Princess mashup prints to go on the empty wall space by the window.
• Make a plaque to go over said prints with lyrics from "A Whole New World" in Disney's Aladdin. I am not sure which line to use but I've got it narrowed down to, "A hundred thousands things to see" or "No one to tell us no or where to go." 
• Embroider a piece to go over the crib with the quote "Let her sleep for when she wakes, she will shake the world." said by Napoleon when he was talkin' 'bout China.

Also, I got an invitation in the mail today for my baby shower! Baby Zazu is adorable up there! So I guess I better RSVP. :) I also need to ask my mother in law what a good hostess gift for Matt's aunt Lori would be since they're hosting together.

So, dear readers, what do you think about the Aladdin lyrics? Which do you think would be best to go over a set of prints of The Doctor beckoning Disney princesses to come on an adventure with him?

Crazy Berries

After posting in a thread on The Bump, I got to see my ticker. Look how far my little strawberry is!

I first made the ticker at around 8 weeks along. Watching it overcome every 5 week mark has been something that I've been happy and excited about, in a small way. I remember being really excited when it was coming up on the 20 marker. And now we're coming up to 35. The little strawberry is almost to the sun.

Repeat after me: Do not worry

Of course when I set my alarm for 7:30 in the morning, it took me until 3:30 in the morning to get to sleep. Between the tiny baby thrash metal concert apparently going on in my abdomen, and the strange way that the room was uncomfortably warm despite the heater having been off for the last three days and my having the patio door open for an hour when I accidentally set off the fire alarm last night, I couldn't get comfortable. I ended up taking the advice that my dad has sworn by since I was a kid, and took a bubble bath.

Despite being exhausted, waking up was pretty easy, actually. I realized when I got up and started poking Matt in the face to wake him up that I'd been looking forward to this ultrasound more than I thought. Part of it was just the happiness that hey, we get a sonogram look into my organs! Awesome! Part of it was the anxiety that I've had about my blood sugars causing too much growth. I put on my lucky tee shirt.

And well, it turns out there was no need to worry about Lorelai being too big. In fact, she's measuring smaller this time than she was last time. At my last measurement ultrasound in which we were blessed with a terrifying picture, she was measuring at the 35th percentile for her age. Today she's measuring at the 13th percentile. The ultrasound tech decided to look at the flow of the umbilical cord when her measurements were calculated.

Can we talk for a moment how amazing technology is? Using the sonogram machine, the tech was able to zoom in on the umbilical cord and then highlight the blood flow in it. In one direction, the blood lit up blue. Flowing in the other direction, the blood lit up red. We were able to see this during my anatomy scan looking at the blood flow of the heart, too. It's pretty seriously cool, and something completely amazing. Just think. There is a way to see just how well the umbilical cord of a fetus is doing it's job without doing anything invasive at all. I'm still impressed.

In any event, the blood flow in the cord looked great, so that isn't what's causing the small size. The maternal fetal medicine specialist came in and looked at everything and talked with me. He said that looking at the level of fluid around the baby and the flow in the umbilical cord, as well as what he knew about my tightly controlled and logged nutrition, that the answer was likely just that Lorelai is always going to be slight in stature. They aren't going to be concerned unless she falls below the 10th percentile. Also, because I start my NSTs next week, they'll be keeping an eye on her development.

The basic theme of the talk was the doctor reminding me that I shouldn't worry, things are okay and going to be okay. And I shouldn't worry. Yet. Maybe. I really don't need to give myself anything to worry about. I don't want to go back into my next measurement ultrasound in a month worrying both that she'll be too big, like I have been, AND that she'll be too small. Stop it, Amanda!

So I'm going to distract myself this weekend by stripping and painting the little white bookshelf we're using as toy storage.

But mostly, I'm not going to worry. Hopefully.