Friday, July 15, 2011

Life.































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Sunday, July 10, 2011

Nevermind.

I should’ve known better than to wax on about how great things are. Our luck never seems to run like that so it was silly on my part to have the nerve to relax my guard and just enjoy life.

Amelia woke up sick yesterday. She’d been snotty-nosed on Friday but by yesterday it appeared to be a full cold. There is still a possibility that it’s an allergy attack or something but it came on suddenly and has endured going on the third day now. Not to mention that on Friday night, she didn’t sleep a wink, which would indicate an actual illness since allergies make you more tired than anything. So Justin was up with her all night and she was just a mess yesterday. She woke up drier today but just sneezed at least 10 times in a row, so the fountain of snot is back.

:(

I spent yesterday totally freaked out about how this affects this week and sinking right back into a gloomy thought pattern. I don’t know what made me think we’d escape this pregnancy without one last illness. We’ve been relatively healthy for about a month (save for the severe asthma and allergies I’ve had). Wouldn’t it just make sense that we’d end it . . . sick?! And what does it mean for this week? Well, first and foremost, it could throw off our whole plan in regards to keeping Amelia in her regular routine of school and whatnot. It certainly makes taking care of her more complicated, probably putting more pressure on Justin. It also means that if still sick come Tuesday, she won’t be able to visit the hospital to 1) meet her sister or 2) see her mama. Not seeing her for 4-5 days?! I’ve never gone that long without seeing her and certainly don’t want THIS to be the occasion that we’re separated for so long. 

:(

And then I had a minor meltdown about getting sick myself yesterday too. If I catch this illness (and let’s face it, I have caught every illness since October), I could potentially not only be sick while giving birth, but also would have to be crazy careful around the baby. The baby that I’ve longed to just snuzzle and kiss and sniff for what feels like a couple years now. *tears*  I just can’t be sick through this. I can’t. We’ve gone through too much to get here.

And just when I was feeling so positive. Fucking figures.

Friday, July 8, 2011

The Good Life

Another hodge-podge post. Too much and yet too little going on to focus on complete thoughts and ideas.

 

37 Week Update

EEP! I can’t believe I’m 37.5 weeks pregnant. Last week was all about pins and needles. Just waited and waited to go into labor . . . and nothing. We had our (LAST!) OB appointment yesterday. It was technically our Pre-op appointment and when I put it on my calendar, I laughed just knowing I wouldn’t make it to that appointment. In any case, the doc checked again via ultrasound and saw Baby’s head is still up . . . but she’d rolled over since last week! Not flipped into a different position entirely, just rolled over so now her feet are on my right and her spine is on my left. Friggin wiggle worm! There’s no room in there. Just relax already! Of course, as the U/S wand moved about my belly, BabyGirl kicked and moved right along with it. The doc also checked my cervix (that seriously sucks btw) again and it was closed and high still. All evidence points to making it to our scheduled surgery next Tuesday. (TUESDAY!) The bad news was that my blood pressure skyrocketed all of a sudden. It was up to 140! My bp is usually very low—100 plus or minus a bit—so 140 was pretty high. We checked it twice and it was the same both times. Off to the hospital we went for a non-stress test. It was the first time we’ve done that! The nurse was fab and by the time they hooked me all up and put me in bed, my bp was back down to 114. Nice. We stayed for about an hour while the continued checking my bp (114 every time) and monitoring the baby. Well, trying to monitor the baby, which meant chasing her around with the monitor trying to get a decent read. She was a bit excited for all the attention. Oddly enough, a couple contractions were even recorded on the little printout too. So that was that. No worries. Everything’s good and we got some preliminary check-in stuff complete at the hospital for Tuesday too. Feeling good about it.

 

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Shifted Thoughts

After constantly looking for any little sign of labor for the past two weeks and walking around on eggshells, I’m now only focused on Tuesday. I have visions of waking up, taking shower, carrying my bag and pillow to the car, arriving at the hospital, and having a baby. While making it this far would have been shocking to me a week ago, my thoughts have shifted. NOT making it to Tuesday would shock me now. I’ve got my eyes on the prize and am SO excited at the thought of avoiding labor. I mean, for shit’s sake, if you have to get gutted from hip to hip and suffer the consequences for months (forever!), you should at least get a pass on labor and those sonofabitch contractions. I mean, there should be something positive about it right? Oddly enough, I’m suddenly feeling like there’s not a lot of time left. I mean, FOUR days from now we’re having a baby. A BABY! A whole new person coming into the world and there’s only a few days between now and then?! Damn. And last week, I was thinking there was no way I could make it to July 12. WTF? You can’t win I guess when you’re a crazy pregnant mama whose mind and body are at odds.

 

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Extra Time

I am SO enjoying this extra time. Justin’s been taking a lot of time off of work and we’ve spent our days hanging by the pool and relaxing. Today was the perfect day. He and Amelia got up early and let me sleep. Once I was up, we hit the pool until lunch time. After lunch, Amelia and I napped (we’re back to napping for now. Fingers crossed) for a couple hours and when we woke up, it was back to the pool. Then Taco Thursday commenced with poolside dining followed by some homemade ice cream, mama/daughter shower, and now mama/daddy relaxing time. So to recap it’s sleep, swim, eat. Repeat. We went through a very rough fall/winter/spring as a family and we are finally enjoying the results of that stress and those sleepless nights. Our new house has its quirks, but when we’re all enjoying these beautiful last moments before baby and lazy, summer days, it feels like our own personal oasis. Justin has me on husband-imposed bed rest, so I’m mostly being spoiled beyond reason at the moment and spending most of my hours submerged or sleeping. It’s wonderful. It may all even be part of the reason that I’ve made it so far into this pregnancy as well. I am actually feeling better this week than the previous few and aside from the predictable discomforts, feeling pretty good and positive. When Amelia was born, I still had a stack of finals on the floor of my office and hadn’t relaxed a bit, since I’d worked until 4 days prior. This time, I’m really enjoying these last days. Of course knowing that there’s only a few days left probably helps too, but it’s been nice to just be for a while and I will always look back at these last couple weeks as precious. IMG_8471 

Which begs the question

Why do I teach every summer? Having time off with my family and even more myself has been amazing! I usually teach 3 classes in the short summer session, making myself crazy with a frantic pace and WAY too much work. We are going to try from this year forward to set ourselves up in a way to avoid my working too much in the summer. It’s an important part of our annual income, but with two babies, maybe not worth it? We’ll see. I feel like a different person without work hanging over my head every minute. Despite the prevalent ideas that teachers have it sooooo easy, it is a job that doesn’t take weekends evenings off. If you’re not responding to student emails every second, you’re grading papers and writing lectures. It’s beyond draining and encompassing. This is the longest break I’ve ever had from teaching and it’s been pretty fantastic.

 

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Independence Day

Justin’s job is another kind of work that sees no holidays. He worked on the 4th (just like he worked on Mother’s Day and Father’s Day—boo) and we definitely missed him. His absence means that we can’t really celebrate the way we’d like. It’s such a family holiday! We still managed a pretty good day. We went to a neighboring town to catch a parade in the morning. It’s a teeny tiny mountain town and the parade was perfect for us. It was little and unimpressive, but easy to find, not overly crowded, and done in an hour. What we (I) didn’t anticipate is that every participant in the parade threw candy into the crowd. Amelia was the only child on the whole block on onlookers, so not only did every parader throw candy directly to her, but all of the adults around us gave her theirs too. I had an entire cloth shopping bag FULL of candy when we left. Good grief, she was spoiled by that crowd. And she was thrilled, naturally. Luckily, I saw a student there randomly enough and unloaded all but a couple lollipops (‘wowwipops’). After nap, we managed to swim with Grammy for most of the afternoon to escape the 90+ heat. Then we had a fab 4th dinner just for the 3 of us that even included homemade tutti fruitti ice cream. Woot. I hoped that Amelia would stay up late enough to see the fireworks for once, but the poor munchkin just couldn’t make it and was in bed by about 815. I wandered into the backyard to watch the fireworks from the Fairgrounds’ show. It was a great show, but I felt lonely missing my love. Not the same without him. Next year, we are having a party at our place for sure. We have a great location for fireworks along with a huge backyard and a great pool. Not to mention, we’ll have a little birthday right around the corner from the holiday to celebrate as well.

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Pictures

So Amelia and I had a photo session. It was a combo maternity/mama and daughter session. It was the hottest day of the year so far at 6pm when we took them and I was much farther along that I’d hoped to be at picture time so I didn’t have the best expectations. As you can see (save for the above pic that I took on my phone), they came out pretty great. It was our first time meeting the photographer and she was fun and the pics came out beautifully. I’d definitely recommend her. Pics courtesy of Channa Vance.  Despite the fact that I look at myself in these pics and cringe a little (holy pregnancy face!!), I can see them for their beauty and just can’t get enough of the pics with my Babygirl. Can’t wait to put some up in the new Baby’s room. I didn’t take any pics when I was pregnant with Amelia largely because it’s so hard to see yourself in that state with any objectivity, but wish I had. So even though I totally dreaded going through with it this time at 35-36 weeks, I am glad I did.

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