28 Weeks Pregnant

As of yesterday, I am 28 weeks into my pregnancy, and officially in the final trimester! Hooray! Remy celebrated with some sort of all-day karate/disco extravaganza. Now that I know what little party animals they are in the womb it seems a bit disingenuous of them to act so innocent and semi-comatose as newborns.

Let's see...how has pregnancy changed recently? Well, I don't know if this is pregnancy related but I have recently found not one but TWO warts on my back! I haven't had a wart since I was a grubby little kid. I also think I'm growing at least one skin tag on my neck. It's all kind of gross. Generally though pregnancy has seemed to improve my skin.

I've also recently noticed that lying on my back, even briefly, makes me feel like I'm going to pass out. It was really scary when I tried to wash my hair in the tub and suddenly felt as if I was suffocating when I leaned back to rinse out my hair. I'm guessing it is because Remy settles back down into my abdominal cavity, compressing my lungs. The days of waking up and finding that I've accidentally rolled onto my back seem to be over.

My lower back is pretty sore from carrying all this awkward weight out in front. In the evenings when it gets really bad I like to put my hands on the coffee table or the couch and lean over, letting my belly just hang. It's kind of like the cat yoga pose only I don't have to get down on the floor - or worse, up off the floor! I'm trying to convince Ross to take me to a hotel this weekend so I can float in the pool for two days - my back needs the vacation!

According to babycenter.com I can expect to gain about 11 more pounds before Remy is born. Yikes. My initial goal was not to go over 165 but I reached that weight by New Years (thanks to holiday food and a less hyperactive thyroid). My next goal was to stay under 180, but I'm pacing to hit that by the end of March. My new goal is to keep it under 200. We'll see. I'm not going to sweat it because I can't be bothered to count calories when I'm so busy trying to figure out what to eat next.


Here's a 28 week development picture. Baby should be about 14.8 inches from head to heel and weigh about 2.25 lbs. If we were looking at Remy from this angle we would probably be looking at the crown of his head because he likes to lie horizontally across my belly with his head on the left and his feet either in front of his face or tucked down on the right side.

I wish I had...

...a box.



She seems a little smug about it, don't you think?

Anyway, we haven't heard back from the Chicago studio that Ross interviewed with and that seems like a bad sign. Meanwhile Ross is preparing to fly out to Las Vegas tomorrow for an interview with another studio. If I were a good wife I would feel thrilled about that, but my actual emotions are falling a bit short at the moment.

I know it's stupid and selfish, but I wish we could just continue to hunker down here and wait. I've been happy here, and I'm scared of trying to start over hundreds of miles away in the third trimester of my pregnancy.

Of course, this is all premature. I shouldn't even be thinking about this stuff until the interview is over. And I really don't want to bring Ross down with my negativity. But I think my internal censor has been incapacitated by lack of sleep.

I'm still making the bed, fixing a meal or two a day, sweeping up the giant tumble weeds of cat hair that blow around this place, washing most of the dishes, and keeping up with the laundry...but that is about all I can manage at present. I have a doctor's appointment next week and I plan to ask her about sleep aids - but I'm sure Miss No-You-Can't-Even-Take-A-Sudafed will be no help there. Oy.

I think I should take a cue from the cats and start taking naps.

Valentine's Day

Hi all! I hope everyone had a lovely Valentine's Day! I'm having a hard time getting my pregnant brain going these days, so I'm not up to writing a blog post, but here are some pics from Sunday.

Flowers

I like growing things, so this year for Valentine's Day Ross got me a little planter box with tulips, ivy, and the most delicate little daffodils growing in it. The best part is that only half the flowers have bloomed, so I will get to watch them emerge. Right now I can see a pink tulip opening up. Piper wants to know if any of it is edible.

Pregnancy Update

I feel like I've been running into walls all week. I am so frustrated by my inability to get more than two and a half hours of sleep at a time, to wash the dishes without getting an excruciating back ache, and to eat a full dinner without getting a hair raising case of heartburn... I've also resumed my old habit of crying at the drop of a hat. In fact, I feel in a lot of ways like I am returning to the first trimester, only with a much more noticeable passenger on board.

Now that the second trimester is almost over I would have to say that this period of pregnancy has been a lot like climbing out of a valley, spending a few glorious weeks at the top of the mountain, and then descending down into the next valley. Of course, I don't know how much of this difficulty is caused by the pregnancy and how much is the fibromyalgia. So maybe in a week or two I'll be seeing things differently.

Remy is doing awesome. He spends most of his time transverse, laying on his side, which would be the WRONG way to come out -- but last week for the first time I felt him get into the proper head down, feet up position. Now I know that he can do it and I hope he practices a lot more before the big day!

He's also had a couple of brief cases of the hiccups. It's nice to know that his diaphragm is doing its thing. According to BabyCenter.com his lungs are "immature" but capable of working if he was to be born this week.

I had the glucose challenge test last week. The test itself wasn't so bad, what was annoying was watching the technicians try to figure out how to bill me. The first time they told me it was going to be $396. Then, when they tried to run my card, the system cancelled the transaction (thank God!) and then another technician tried it an hour later and told me it was only $90-something dollars. Whew. But it makes me wonder about the last two times I was in there...

Anyway, I drank the sugary drink (which was fine at first but started to burn my throat a little by the end), sat in the waiting room for an hour with a sleeping husband, they drew my blood, I paid my bill, and that was that. Got my test results on Tuesday and everything was normal.

My next doctors visit is Thursday and I think after that I will be going in every two weeks. We still haven't painted the nursery, so that is at the top of my to-do list. Ross's mom is coming out for the family shower in April and since the nursery doubles as the guest room I want to have it all finished up by then. In other news, Ross interviewed with a local video game studio last week and we should hear something back tomorrow. I'm praying for good news! (And blessed insurance!)

Earthquake

We had an earthquake here this morning around 4am. I was sleeping, Ross was upstairs playing Magic online. I suddenly found myself awake (a pretty normal occurrence these days) and when I heard the cats scrambling frantically in the living room I assumed that it must have been them that woke me up. But the next thing I know Ross is running down the stairs calling my name. He came into the bedroom and said, "I think we just had an earthquake!"

Apparently while he was playing his game he noticed that the monitor started to rock back and forth. There was a low noise and within a few moments he said the whole house felt like it was shaking. He IMed the guy he was playing with that he had to quit the game because he thought we were having an earthquake!

I was skeptical at first but I remember that we've had a couple of small earthquakes in the last ten years or so and I realized he could be right. But I told him I didn't think we should worry because the nearest dangerous fault line was down near St. Louis. So I went back to bed and he went upstairs to check the news.

Sure enough, it was a 3.8 (originally reported as 4.1) earthquake originating just 45 miles outside of Chicago near Gilberts! I have friends who grew up in Gilberts, it's covered in corn fields and cow pastures and it looks like the last place you would have an earthquake. As freaky as it is to think we can have seismic activity so close to home, what we felt doesn't even compare to the earthquake in Haiti, which was about 1,600 times stronger, according to US Geological Survey. I can't even imagine.

Snow Day

I had a hard time sleeping last night (getting used to that) so sat in the living room in the dark watching snow fall outside the picture window. Twelve hours later and the snow is still falling. We won't be seeing the kind of dramatic accumulation they had in DC and Maryland, but it's enough to keep Ross and I holed up in the house!
When I took these the only sound in the muffled stillness was cheerful birdsong. I think it was the family of cardinals that live in the back yard, but I couldn't see them.

Hmmm, I wonder if we should have put the tether ball away for the winter?

Me Want!

Thanks to a conversation my aunt was having with her girlfriends on FB about the difficulties of gardening in Colorado I found something that set my heart apounding!

BEHOLD!

Here is the product description from Amazon:

Enjoy the taste and fragrance of fresh herbs, vegetables and salad greens grown right in your kitchen. The AeroGarden grows them all with no dirt, mess or pesticides. Plants grow in water, nutrients and air, up to twice as fast as plants grown in soil. It’s easy, foolproof, and 100% guaranteed. It’s self-watering and self-feeding. The AeroGarden automatically controls the built-in grow bulbs and tells you when to add more water and nutrients. Grow fresh Italian Basil, Purple Basil, Chives, Dill, Mint, Parsley & Thyme with the included Gourmet Herb Seed Kit. Seed kits for cherry tomatoes, chili peppers romaine lettuce, petunias and more also available.

As magnificent as the 6 pod model show above is, I am leaning toward the 3 pod because I have a tiny kitchen and as much as I like the big one I just can't imagine where it would go without me having to curse it every day. The 3 pod is about the size of a coffee pot and I could stick it in a corner and not be too inconvenienced. And it's on sale for 62% off, which is wonderful when you are trying to convince your husband to get you something he might otherwise find completely ridiculous.

Last year we really meant to plant an herb garden but the veggies and flowers took all of my attention and I never got around to it. And I know I wouldn't do one this summer because I've already decided that I'm ONLY doing flowers. Thanks to modern technology, I can have an herb garden without having to do any gardening, or give up any valuable flower-growing real estate!

Whether You Wanna See or Not!

(For my own vanity's sake I would like to stress that that is NOT hair around my belly button - it is more pigmentation like you see in the lines and some veins.)

Celebrate Good Times, Come On!

The baby countdown has entered the double digits people!

The weather man says we are 2/3 of the way through this blasted winter!

And, in even bigger news, Ross is currently in the city on a job interview!!! I'm sure they are falling in love with him as we speak (what's not to love?!)

Let's see, what else is going on...

Tomorrow is my glucose challenge test. That ought to be...interesting.

And last night was the season premier of Lost. Personally, I was NOT disappointed. I really had no idea they would go the split time-line route. In fact, it never occurred to my tiny, dull brain that such a thing was a possibility. I love both lines of the story and can't wait to see how it all ends! My favorite scenes were Jack Shepherd and John Locke in the baggage claim office and imposter-Locke discussing real Locke with Ben in the base of the statue. Just one episode into the season and I think Terry O'Quinn is already a sure thing for an Emmy this year. And how can you not love a show that gives a shout out to Soren Kierkegaard?