Tuesday, January 29, 2013

Twas the Night before my Glucose Screening...

I'm insanely worried about getting gestational diabetes.  When I was still getting sick with frequency (TMI alert), I used to have cloudy pee all the time.  Which I don't know why, but I feel like I read that it has to do with extra protein in your urine?  I have no idea why I thought/think that but I've just read way too much during this pregnancy and for some reason in my mind the protein in the urine thing and pee cloudiness means that I'm going to have GD.  I'm probably an idiot but this stupid test has been causing me anxiety for awhile and I just want tomorrow morning to be over.

I've been eating as little carbs today as possible (and I had lots of fruit this morning so not even eating fruits tonight) which might be ok, except that I have not really been eating meat much during pregnancy.  So it leaves me basically bacon and vegetables.  Which means that tomorrow morning, I can basically eat bacon before the test (I hate eggs and I'm nervous to eat even spinach, the doctor said only protein).  I'm losing my MIND with angry hunger (or hanger, if you will).  Luckily, it's raining so Tuesday night Run Group is cancelled.  I'd have probably skipped it otherwise because I feel like the only fuel I have in my body is my buttcheeks and back fat.  I have no idea what to have for dinner (lucky Adam, he'll be home to face my hanger in a few minutes) and I am SO stressed that tonight will be a pregnancy insomnia night of hunger and sadness.  (Yes, I realize I am partially doing this to myself and that I'm an idiot but I don't want to have to do the 3 hour glucose tolerance test and I hear that these stupid glucose screenings give lots of false positives so I'm taking EVERY precaution.)

So there you have it, my two pregnancy fears of the moment are gestational diabetes and pre-eclampsia (again, this comes from the cloudy urine, which I haven't had in a couple of weeks anyway, IDIOT!).  I made the mistake of **Downton spoiler alert** watching the latest Downton Abbey with my mom today (my first episode ever) so now pre-e and eclampsia are ALL UP in my mind.  Pregnancy is FREAKING AWESOME, yo.  Being neurotic is also awesome.

And speaking of neurosis, this has nothing to do with anything but I want to record it for posterity, Higgins has lost his damn mind.  My mom was living with us for three weeks until Friday and I think Higgins formed some sort of crazy attachment to her.  He's been all out of sorts since she moved to her own place.  Normally, our snuggle hating dog has no problem getting in his own bed at night (but he always ends up on ours by morning) but last night he wouldn't budge and when Adam picked him up to put him in the bed, he started shaking, which is new for bedtime.  Our dog is special needs and never stops freaking us out with his brand of crazy.

P.S.  We've also reached that fun part where when Owen kicks a good one, it shakes my belly, which is reaching epic Santa proportions.  It's good times!

Friday, January 11, 2013

Feeling Lucky

In another chapter for my book titled, Pregnancy:  It's Not Like You Were Expecting... At All, I got to spend a day and a half in the hospital this week.  My Tuesday was pretty much like any other "good day" of this pregnancy.  I worked from home in the morning, taught yoga during the lunch hour, worked in the afternoon and then went to Pilates.  We had Noah's Ark style never ending rain start in Dallas around lunch time and continued all day and night.  After Pilates, I went to dinner with two friends and other than probably eating too much queso I felt fine until I got in my car to drive home.  At least twice I seriously considered pulling over and throwing up in a parking lot but the pouring rain convinced me that it would just be better to try to make it all the way home.  At that point, nothing was truly out of the ordinary, there have been many times where I've felt fine until about 30 minutes after eating and I've made the drive home while trying not to yack in the car enough to know what I could really handle.  I got home and sure enough expelled my dinner.  I wasn't feeling the usual relief afterward, I still felt pretty nauseated and gross.

Adam and I registered for the 3M Half Marathon in Austin sometime early last spring but now that the weekend had arrived, we'd been really lazy about making any concrete plans and setting up our hotel room.  I was feeling so gross and the weather isn't supposed to be great on Sunday so as I was listening to the pouring rain outside I told him that night that I didn't think we should make the trip.  Running (slash walking) the half was one of my biggest pregnancy goals but I also thought I'd feel a lot differently at this point and my disastrous training run from last weekend had really dampened my spirits.  We kind of tabled our discussion on it and decided to go to bed early because I was still feeling pretty awful.

I woke up sometime between 11:30 and midnight for the first time and we think I was probably awake every 15 minutes after that all night.  Around 1:00 I started to get worried about the possibility of dehydration and what it would do to the baby.  I was also suffering from AWFUL heartburn and stomach pain from indigestion so I couldn't really lay down comfortably.  If I hadn't been feeling so feverish and cold, I'd have just laid in the fetal position on the bathroom floor but the tile was ice cold.  It also throws a wrench in your plans when you're sick and pregnant as there are so many more medication limitations to deal with.  We called my OB's office and left a message for the doctor on call, who called us right back and said that I should try to sip on fluids and take something more powerful than Tums.  Adam left to try to find me some better heartburn meds and I continued the cycle of being sick.  I took some Zantac when Adam got home but I'd rather not remember how awful that was coming back up.  Looking back, I am still thankful that I stayed at home rather than going to the ER especially with all of the flu everything that is going around.  We called the OB in the morning and they had me come in right away and it only took them about 10 minutes to decide that I needed to be admitted and get on IV fluids ASAP.  Luckily, Owen was just hanging loose and giving me lots of kicks so there was very little concern about him during my entire ordeal.  I was still throwing up (so awesome, yeah baby!) during the hospital check in process that seemed to take forever.  Here's where I started to really feel that I hadn't slept all night for the most part and the tears started flowing about EV-ER-Y-THING.  We checked in at L&D so of course I started crying thinking about May and just making it until that time that we go to the hospital for a HAPPY reason!  Then I realized just how much money that my stupid hospital visit was going to cost and more tears.  Oy.

We finally got put in a room and I was hooked up to an IV bag that I drained in probably 30 minutes.  They gave me anti-nausea medication, which was great physically but a total mental letdown since I'd made it 23.5 weeks on my own without any medications other than heartburn stuff.  Frustrating!  But totally necessary in this case.  During all my vitals checks, I still kept having a temp of 97ish (which is kind of normal for me, I always have low temps and BP) but I felt so craptastic, just like having a fever (body aches, hot, chills, etc.).  The initial plan was to see how I responded to the IV fluids and hang for a few hours and go from there.  At some point, a guy came in to mess with our TV and he mentioned that we had a really bad set and he could have a flat screen sent right up.  Adam told him not to worry about it because we'd be leaving soon and the maintenance guy seemed shocked and said that I was in the long-term wing.  That's when it hit me that the OB observation wing is the place where people are that are on bed rest for much more severe problems and issues.  Total reality check.

Sometime in the afternoon I fell asleep for a bit and when I woke up the nurse brought me some saltines and cranberry juice to see how that all went down.  Other than the night before, I have never had more painful heartburn in my life as I did after drinking the cranberry juice.  I was SO uncomfortable and still feeling feverish and overall awful.  My OB was the doctor on call that night so she came up to check on me in the late afternoon and since I was still feeling so wretched and I hadn't responded to the IV fluids they way they had hoped, she made the call that I'd be spending the night.  And oh, the tears really came then.  Especially because they told me more of what I already knew, because I'm pregnant, there was nothing they could really do for me other than to keep giving me fluids and anti-nausea meds until my body cleared the bug out.  I ordered dinner (SO GROSS) that I did not eat, especially since my request for chocolate ice cream was denied by the food staff (vanilla is not an acceptable substitute).  At 7:00, I got new nurses and of course, I was running a fever at that point (WTF, body!) so I got to do a really fun up-the-nose flu test.  And my nausea returned, YAY barf bags!  But at least I finally got Tylenol to bring the fever down since a temp can be dangerous for Owen.  Like I said before, he was just being his active little baby self the entire time, which was really nice and reassuring.  Since my mom is here to watch Higgins, Adam was able to stay the night with me on the extra rollaway bed in the room (the Presbyterian hospital here is really nice, despite it being you know, an icky hospital).  We both fell asleep hard before the flu test results came in and I was dead to the world until around 5:00 a.m.  At one point, I do remember waking up in a pool of sweat so I was really hoping that my fever had broken.  At 5:00, it's not a totally uncommon thing for me to be awake so I ate some of my leftover saltines from the day before and had a 7up before falling back asleep.  I woke up around 7:00 again for the nurse changeover and found out I was still running a slight fever (damn it) and ordered some breakfast.  One of the other doctors from my practice came up to check on me (he must have been the on call yesterday) and he told me that my flu test was negative (thankfully, or else I'd have been looking for a refund on the dang flu shot) and that we'd see how breakfast went before we made any decisions for the day.  I managed to eat a totally disgusting biscuit and some raisin bran without feeling sick or actually getting sick and just hung out and napped for most of the morning since Adam went to work.  My mom came and sat with me in the late morning and after looking over the nasty lunch menu, she went downstairs to get me a Veggie Delite from Subway.  I had just finished my sandwich when the doctor came back.  Since I'd now eaten two meals (overachiever) and kept them down and my temperature was lower, I got to GO HOME!

Y'all I took one of the best baths of my life when I got home, it felt so good to put on fresh clothes and wash off the sick and stank.  I took another fat nap and have been convalescing (with chocolate Ben and Jerry's- thankyouverymuch!) since then.  Today I feel much better but still kind of icky and weak and my chest is still really sore from so much vomiting and coughing on Tuesday night and Wednesday.  I go back to see the doctor on Tuesday and hopefully all checks out well.

Overall, being in that wing of the hospital definitely reminded me that although nothing has been easy like I expected, that I am still in the very lucky group of people.  Tomorrow is 24 weeks, which in the high risk world, is considered baby's viability day where they will attempt to save his life if God forbid he were to come super early.  I kept mulling over that while I was in the hospital that I've made it to an important milestone and each day he stays in there is just better for the both of us at this point.  We have excellent caretakers, both on the regular and high risk sides, and luckily they are all in one building of a very nice hospital where I feel very well taken care of (aside from the food but that is a problem that can be easily solved by runs downstairs to Subway).  When my nurse came in yesterday morning, she asked me what my goal for the day was.  Of course, mine was to go home but I realized that most of the other people that she sees aren't that fortunate and might have goals to just make it to viability day or to keep baby on the inside just one day longer or maybe to be able to get up and walk around the hall.

(Obviously, we won't be going to Austin this weekend.  I'm bummed but I know it's the right thing to do.  There's always next year when I'll hopefully be a few pounds lighter and in good running shape again.  3M- I'm comin' for ya.)

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Quickie

We have to fill out a worksheet for Adam's attorney as part of the foreclosure process.  There's nothing quite like the feeling you get when you have to go through your entire house and value your possessions.  I'm talking about everything from our kitchen supplies and food to the lamps we own.  It was hysterical!  Being the avid Craigslister that I am, I made realistic estimates as to what we could get for selling everything.  But really, food?  I'll probably consume everything we currently own in the food department before the bank ever makes a decision on this!  But never fear, I'll let you know where to look if we end up doing our fire sale.

Wednesday, January 2, 2013

What I'm going to do in 2013...

... oh, you know, in addition to birthing a child and figuring out how these little mini-humans work.  

I made one of these little to-do lists in lieu of resolutions in 2011 and I actually did almost everything on it so why not give it a go again.  My 2011 list included doing such lofty goals as "researching teacher training" which I ended up actually completing that year so apparently typing my wishes down in a concise Excel spreadsheet actually works for me, who knew?

1.  Read 20 "for me" books.  Which basically means books not on parenting and/or getting your baby to sleep.  Which seems like such a wimpy goal but I didn't read any in 2012.  Also in conjunction with this, putting my phone down more, writing more and taking more pictures.

2. Run a 5K in under 27:00.  This will be a late fall goal for me but I think it'll give me something inspiring to train for over the summer after Owen comes.

3. Get back to the weight I was when I took my positive pregnancy test.  Ironically, this was the lowest weight I've seen since high school.  Not ironically, I think it had something to do with basically giving up alcohol.  Dammit.

4. Paint Owen's room and get his nursery ready!  Started with a paint sample today so moving right along with this project.

5. Run a half marathon in under 2:10.  My previous best is 2:05 but I think I want to tackle the under 2 hours mark in 2014.  I'm trying to be realistic about life and my body post-baby.

6. Do my own 30 day yoga challenge.  I'm not even 100% sure that I went 30 days straight when I was in teacher training!  I did more than 1 class a day on several occasions so I know that I can physically do it but I want the mental challenge of getting myself to class every day for 30 days in a row.

7. Go to the Blathering in October.  It's high time and I'll be able to really enjoy it this year.  And it is a "kill two birds with one stone" situation as I've always wanted to visit Charleston and South Carolina is one of only 4 states I have left to go to.

8. Get spin certified.  Hopefully can knock this one out in late summer.  This one makes up for the fact that Owen is due during the week of our MS 150 ride this year.

9. Find a play group, for Owen but also for me.

10. Find a church and baptize the little man.  This one will be a mom-assisted goal, for sure.  But I grew up with strong church bonds and friends and I want that for Owen.

11. Go and see at least 6 movies in the theater.  Again, probably an easy goal for you but a REALLY tough one for me!

12. Stay on budget now that we'll be a one income + part-time yoga teacher family.  Time to get serious about not getting everything I want.

13. Work on my garden and plant a lime and/or lemon tree.

And there you have it.  I didn't plan for it to end up being 13 items but now that I've arranged it this way, it seems just perfect for this year.

Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Ringing in the New Year

My New Years Eve started rather early as it was just one of those nights where I got up for a 2:30 a.m. bathroom break and could never get back to sleep.  I spent a big portion of the night watching a rerun of Meet the Press and Early Today on the couch.  Pregnancy insomnia is just one of those things and it strikes me at the strangest times, kind of like this continuous being sick, without any rhyme or reason.  But there are far worse things than watching TV at 4:00 a.m. and sometimes the couch is more comfortable, weirdly, for my stretching belly.  I severely underestimated the strange discomfort that would come from everything stretching to accommodate Owen.

I taught yoga in the morning and because Adam was off, he came to class with me.  I had a bigger group than normal because it was one of the only classes offered that day (my regulars are awesome and asked me to come in and teach) and we did several rounds of Sun Salutations to usher in the new year.  I love Sun Salutations because they are so basic and a great opportunity to focus on breathing and the relatively easy movements.  I went to work and ran some work errands for a few hours and came home to make up for lost sleep and take a serious nap.  My phone rang while I was eating lunch and because I didn't recognize the number, I let it ring until they left a voicemail.  When I started to listen to the message, it was the high risk doctor's office with our test results.  I was shocked that they came back so much quicker than she said they would, despite all the holidays the lab must have taken!  She said right away, to my relief, that all the chromosomal tests came back negative so we know that Owen doesn't have Trisomy 13, 18 or 21 (21 is Downs and 13/18 are usually fatal).  Luckily, the results came back exactly as the doctor thought they would.  Phew!  I'm glad I did the testing even though it might have turned out to be a big fat waste of money if our insurance doesn't cover it.  It almost makes it worth it just to be able to tell my regular OBGYN on Friday that we did the test and it came up negative so hopefully they won't offer us anything else to worry about.  I'm thankful that we have one less big obstacle to worry about so we can concentrate on the relatively minor issue with his kidneys.  I wish I knew that it was something that I could do, like eating more spinach or drinking more water that would fix it!  Either way, I just feel better prepared to handle what may come of it, whether the problem starts to correct itself or not.  I'm thankful that all of the extra monitoring shows him healthy in every other way so we just carry on business as usual.

We started a loaf of French bread in our new bread machine before I laid down to dominate a nap for 2+ hours.  The bread machine is going to turn out to be one of the best kitchen gadgets we own.  It makes bread from scratch that tastes like a bakery and it makes the house smell like happiness, which can be either a good or bad thing, depending on your hunger level.  We took the bread and some other delicious goodies to our friends' house to celebrate the new year in a perfect low key way.  We had some lively conversations about just about everything in the way that things just work when you share a lot in common with another couple.  I did miss having champagne because sparkling grape juice just isn't the same.  Lately, I've been missing beer for the first time since my sickness is slowly fading away.  But it's amazing to realize that Owen's due date is only 4 months and 3 days away.  It will be here before I know it!

I know that 2013 will bring us so many memories and happy times.  My mom moves here to Dallas this week, my dad is getting remarried to an awesome lady in March, Owen is due in May and my brother gets married to a close friend of mine in October, just after Adam and I celebrate our third anniversary.  There is very little chance that I won't celebrate my first Mother's Day this year and Adam will definitely be celebrating Father's Day!  Being an adult isn't so bad after all.  Given that we have 364 more days to work on it, it's a good possibility that the condo situation will be resolved in whatever way that ends up by the end of 2013.

Looking forward, I'm confident that we'll be able to end 2013 even better than the end of 2012.