Buh bye

I’ve made a good faith effort, but I hate the free version of WordPress and I just can’t do it anymore.

Back to Blogger.

Still on hiatus, but…

So, we were driving to DC on Saturday and P started complaining about the mix of songs on my playlist. Particularly, he didn’t think that a mid-90s Snoop Dogg song (shuddupdon’tjudgeme) should be on the same playlist as Madonna, Kelly Clarkson, etc. He also commented on the fact that I listened to so much rap music in the mid-90s. I pointed out to him that he likes the Snoop Dogg song, so I wasn’t sure why he was complaining in the first place.

It was at this point that he looked up from his sudoku puzzle, adjusted the collar on his J. Crew polo shirt, and said, without a hint of irony:

“Yeah, but I have street cred.”

True story.

Hiatus

I haven’t really felt like writing in this blog lately, so I’m going to take a little break from blogging here. I’m sure I’ll be back eventually, but you can find me at my motherhood blog in the meantime, if you’re so inclined.

Au revoir for now.

Baby I’s birth story

Baby I was born on January 22nd. His birth story is posted in my other blog. It would have been posted here too, but WordPress is being difficult about letting me cut and paste. Grr.

Surprise!

… Or not.

Still here. Still pregnant. I had a non-stress test yesterday and the baby is fine – just comfortable in there, I guess. I’m now 3 cm dilated, but still not having any real contractions or anything. The midwife stripped my membranes again, which caused me to have some severe cramping and maybe 3 or 4 mild contractions, but it didn’t send me into labor. Argh.

I have an ultrasound scheduled for Friday to check the amniotic fluid levels and then an appointment at the birth center for a non-stress test immediately following the ultrasound. I’m really hoping not to need those appointments; N is home on Fridays and I can’t imagine that she’ll be terribly patient about accompanying us to 2+ hours of testing. The midwife yesterday was saying that if everything continues to look good with the baby, we may not need to go to the hospital for an induction until 42 weeks 1 day. On the one hand, I’d appreciate the extra day to try for a birth center birth (I really don’t want to go to the hospital), but on the other hand, January 27th is way after my original due date and I’ll be really upset if I’m still pregnant at that point. We’ll see what happens, I guess.

Depression is setting in

I spent the entire day on the couch today, but I still feel exhausted. The allergy attack that I had this morning didn’t help – the medication I took to counteract it made me even more tired and the allergies themselves made my right eye all itchy and bloodshot and gross-looking. I don’t feel like eating real food, or any food, really. I’ve eaten two bowls of cereal today and had boxed mac and cheese for lunch that mostly just gave me heartburn. Vegetables sound completely unappealing. If we had ice cream, I’d eat that… but I don’t feel up to going out for it and I don’t feel right asking P to do it (again – I already sent him out for some yesterday, but it’s gone). We have frozen pizza, but I don’t even want that; I want greasy, yummy real pizza, but I don’t feel like paying for it.

I’m dreading tomorrow. DREADING. N doesn’t go to school on Fridays and I don’t have anything close to enough energy to keep up with her all day by myself. She’s in the process of dropping her nap, and on Monday (my last day alone with her), I spent the whole afternoon desperately trying to make her nap because I so needed the break. I’m almost certain that she won’t nap tomorrow (Fridays are usually worse than Mondays for that purpose), and I just.can’t.do.it. All she wants to do is run and play, which is exactly what she should want to do as a nearly-three-year-old, and I feel like a horrible parent because I seriously want no part of it right now. I can’t walk, squat, or sit on the floor with her, all because of the baby head engaged in my pelvis and the never-ending backache from my giant belly. I just want to sleep until the baby comes. Especially because I can’t sleep at night anymore, so when I don’t get to rest during the day, I just plain don’t get to rest, period.

I can’t stop crying. It hits me at random moments and I’m just… overcome. I’m so, so miserable. I just want our baby to come out so that I can feel better, get to know him, and enjoy spending time with my husband and daughter again. Please, please, please let me go into labor tonight so that I don’t have to face the long day tomorrow…

Grumble, part 2

Today I was 1 cm dilated. Yes, that’s half a centimeter less than last week. I’m choosing to believe that the midwife last week was trying to make me feel good and that my cervix is not actually going in reverse, but still. 1 cm at one day past my due date? Not cool. I’m 50% effaced and the baby is low, so at least there’s that. And for the moment, anyway, he is not posterior, so unless he flips over, I shouldn’t have back labor this time (and now that I’ve said that, watch him flip over!).

I’m so frustrated. I am so over being pregnant. My feet are so swollen that even my one-size-up-from-usual shoes don’t fit anymore. I’m walking around in flip flops… in January! There’s so much fluid in my hands that I can’t bend my fingers all the way. The baby is so low in my pelvis that I can barely walk. I can’t sleep at all. I have to pee every 10 seconds. It sucks. Plus, I want to meet our baby boy!

The midwife swept my membranes today, which should theoretically send me into labor within 48 hours… if the baby is ready to come out. If he’s not, it won’t do a damn thing. After that? I have a non-stress test (NST) scheduled for Monday that I’m desperately hoping to not need. If the baby is okay during the non-stress test, they’ll re-sweep my membranes and schedule me for another NST and an ultrasound three days later to check fluid levels. If I make it to the second NST and ultrasound and the fluid levels are okay, they’ll try a castor oil induction (which would still let me deliver at the birth center). If even that doesn’t work, we’ll be continuing with NSTs and membrane sweeps every few days. As long as the baby is okay, we won’t need to be induced at the hospital until the 26th; but if the baby starts showing signs of distress at any point, they’ll send me for a hospital induction immediately.

All of that sounds very exhausting, so everyone please keep your fingers crossed that baby boy decides to show up on his own within the next couple of days. :-\

Grumble

As of 3:30 this afternoon, I was 1.5 cm dilated. That is not good news. At my 39 week appointment when I was pregnant with N, I was 2 cm dilated… and she was, as you will all recall, 6 days late (officially) / 9 days late (based on my charting). Being even less dilated this time does not bode well. Even the midwife was like, “be prepared to have this baby after your due date.”

I don’t WANT to have this baby after my due date. Frankly, I wanted to have this baby 2 weeks ago! I am very, very, very cranky right now.

Totally boring

I realize that my blog is totally boring these days. I hope to once again have hobbies and activities happening in my life relatively soon, and I’m sure that I’ll have lots to talk about over the next few months with respect to opening my practice, but right now all of my thoughts and energy are pretty much focused on getting this baby out of me. I know that doesn’t make for terribly interesting reading, so sorry about that.

I had a ton of Braxton-Hicks contractions earlier today (to the point where I had P pick N up from school because I wasn’t sure that I could drive through the discomfort), but alas, they never settled into a pattern and seem to have mostly disappeared now. Boo. I’m about to ask P to do some accupressure on me, and if that doesn’t work, I’m going to beg for a membrane sweep at tomorrow’s appointment and hope that that gets things going. Seriously, it would be nice to have something, anything, going on that would indicate that a baby is imminent, but thus far there’s been nothing.

Cross your fingers for me…

2010

New Year’s Eve we dropped mushrooms

and danced around the house

Making music with everything that we found

Incantation replaced resolution

And we vowed to allow each perfection

that we could be

And the goddesses sent word

that this would be a red letter year

They didn’t mention how much shit was gonna change around here

It’s just as well we weren’t swollen with unfocused dread

We had visions of sugarplums dancing in our heads

Dancing in our heads

-Ani DiFranco

—

Happy New Year, everyone. Here’s hoping that 2010 is full of more sugarplums than dread, for all of us.