Adventures in Labor and Delivery Ward Part II

Yup, was there again last night for 3 hours trying to figure out what the extreme upper abdominal pain I was having last night. They think my large intestine is being "squished" (actual techie term, I guess, because my doc used it) between my ribs and my uterus. Meaning, this baby is bigger than Lexie was. Great, just great. They were afraid it was the sign of HELLP. I'm so glad it isn't.

Baby sounds good, she was kicking the monitor almost the entire time we were there. The nurse got mad at me because after 2 hours I disconnected myself from the machines. I mean, come on, I wasn't there for a NST and all we were doing was waiting for my urine test to come back (oh yeah, I have an UTI...FUN!). Why do I need to be on those monitors and forced to lay in some wacko position? I didn't. The nurse disagreed. We had words. I won. S says he so hopes she isn't on when I come back for labor. That would be my luck though.

I'm tired of this. Tired of the pain, tired of the peeing (though after the anti-biotics kick in that should return to somewhat "normal"). Only 7 more weeks. I can do it. Yes, I can.

Maybe I'm amazed at the way I need you

S had just put his sunglasses on and Lexie is amazed. Look! A new daddy.

T-minus 55 days and counting (edited to add my thoughts on lunchmeat)

32 week check up today. Everything is as it should be. Blood pressure 124/82 and I've lost the 3 lbs. I had gained two weeks ago. Hmmm, don't know how that happened. All I've been shoving into my face is lunch meat ans Starbursts (just finished off about 20 of those suckers just now).

Have I mentioned yet how tired of being pregnant I am? I figured out that at the end of all this in a span of 24 months. I will have been pregnant for 18. Yuck.

As I told S, after this one my uterus is on strike!

Edited to add: Anonymous poster brought up some concerns about consuming lunchmeats while pregnant. There is a risk of lunchmeats carrying the bacteria listeria (click here for interesting article). I'm assuming that Oscar Meyer lunchmeat is safe.

Here's the thing about our house

Some of you have wondered why we don't just move? Some of you have even said you would move if in this house. Well, here's the thing. Rent here is freaking CHEAP.

See, S's boss owns this house and likes to rent it dirt cheap to his employees. For that we will stay. Just to throw some numbers out at you...We were living in a 850 sq. ft. Townhouse for about $1200 a month. That's considered reasonable for the area we live in (I know, I think 'reasonable' my ass too). That townhouse had two bedrooms, 1.5 baths, and a kitchen only one person could be in at once. FUN! The house we are in now is about 1600 sq. ft., three bedrooms plus den/office, 2 baths, and a kitchen the whole family could do a jig in, if the need should ever arise. And, we're paying about $1000 per month. The house three doors down (hmmm, speaking of three doors down, whatever happened to that band?) has the same floor plan and I know they are paying about $3500 per month in rent. Yeouch!

So, for now I'm willing (somewhat) to put up with all night porch lights and driveway blocking. We've been here a year and hopefully won't be here longer than another year. The goal now is to move to Idaho, where houses are cheap and the land is pretty (why do I feel the urge to belt out a Guns-n-Roses song all of a sudden?). Plus, my mom lives up there and ever since I became a mom, I've missed her most terribly.

Thank you for your concern though. And to Jaynee: thanks for the great idea of parking in their driveway. I told S, and he is salivating over the thought.

How I start my day

Hmm, maybe I need to lay off the Diet Coke?

Won't you be my neighbor

I'm sick of the street we live on. Not only are the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit...think subway) tracks directly across the street to our left, not only is it a busy road where the speed limit is clearly marked 35 yet most losers drive 50, but my neighbors across the street and to our right suck. A lot.

Let's start with the blonde "I'm better than you" bitch across the street. Every morning she stand outside, cigarette dangling from her lips, watering her lawn. All the while glaring at our lawn like it is a personal insult to her just because most of it is made up of weeds. Hey, at least they're green weeds. She then proceeds to bitch loudly about the fact that I don't have my dog on a leash. Never mind that Kaya (the dog in question) is too chicken shit to leave our front lawn. I think she's pissed because I let our dog piss and pooh all over our own lawn. GASP.

The icing on the cake with this neighbor is her porch light. The porch light she turns on at 11:30pm every night, right before she goes to bed. Yeah, so her freakin' porch light shines into my bedroom window all night long. And it's situated in such a spot that it shines right through the hole in the blinds we have up, right onto my face. Son of a bitch.

Now, onto the neighbors next door. They are a lovely family, with very cute kids. Kids that like to scream outside every morning at 6am. But, that's not why they upset me. No, it's the fact that they have like 7 cars and not one of them is parked in their empty garage or empty driveway. No. Almost nightly one of their cars is blocking our driveway, so that I have to go ask them to move it before S gets home for work. Sometimes, S has to ask them to move in the mornings so he can get to work. This has been going on for almost a year. We thought at first it was a language barrier or something. But, I know they speak English. I think they're just dumb. They also have one truck that has an alarm installed that is so sensitive to sound, it goes off every time a motorcycle drives by.

Here's a kicker. They repaved their driveway two weeks ago, and still won't walk on it. It's kind of comical to watch actually. They tiptoe around the edges, teetering side-to-side like they are crossing some narrow bridge 10 miles up. It would tickle me more, but then I think about the cars that should be parked there and I get all mad again.

So, there you have it. My wonderful neighbors. I'm just glad we are renting right now and are not stuck owning this house.

Adventures in Labor and Delivery Ward

Yup, I got to spend 3 glorious hours at L&D yesterday. Why? Because I'm a nutjob.

No, what really happened was I noticed at about 11am that I hadn't felt Baby Monkey move all morning. What a way to get the panic rolling. And rolling it went. I was so hyped up on being freaked out I couldn't hold still long enough to do an hour of kick counts. Maybe 3 minutes would go by, I wouldn't feel anything and then I would start bawling. Have I told you all how melodramatic I am yet? Yeah.

So, I put a call into my doc's office. Dr. Kinda Nice (there is Dr's. Nice, Kinda Nice, and Rarely Nice) called me back and suggested I head over to L&D for a NST (non-stress test). Let the absolute FREAKING out begin.

I called S's work and, of course, he's out on delivery and "forgot" the radio/phone (he does this so they don't bug him...loser). I'm crying and tell them to tell him to meet me at L&D. That'll get him moving. I called my bestest, most wonderfulest friend L to drive me over. I tell her S will meet us there.

Yeah, he totally beat us. Which isn't good, considering her was 30 minutes from the hospital and we were 10. Hmmm, can we say speed?

They immediately hooked me up to the Doppler thingy (techie terms comin' at ya) and after a few heart-stopping seconds, found Monkey's heartbeat. Nice and Strong. Few. Then came the boring 3 hours of non-stress testing. It took so long because they kept losing her on the monitor. I finally found her and kept my hand on the damn thing so I could get out of there.

All in all, I felt pretty silly. But, sometimes you need that reassurance that everything is fine. S congratulated me on making it to 30 weeks before flipping out. With Lexie I freaked about every 2 weeks, wailing and crying that I knew she was gone. Oy.

Wow, she's, like, deep and stuff

Oh Britney, Britney, Britney. What, in all that is holy, does this mean? Does this mean you aren't with child? And so you are poo-pooing on the tabloids for announcing that you are? Do you really think Us Weekly gives a crap about you, as a person. Honey, to them you are a paycheck, a means to an end. *sigh*

And why, why, why do I waste my time going to her site? I can only relate it to driving past an accident on the highway. You know if you see blood and guts that you will be sick, but you can't look away for fear of missing any of it.

It is good to know that she digs People magazine, at least.

She's got a ticket to ride

This is Kaya, Wonderpup, scared of everything (including the camera). She is my first "child" or Practice Kid as my mom called her. Don't let her size fool you, she can put the food away.

She wasn't too sure about Lexie until recently. That's when it dawned on her that Lexie=meal ticket. Oh yeah, you could almost see her little chihuahua brain working out the benefits of having the kid around. The absolute joy on her face when Lexie is placed into her highchair is almost comical. Wait, scratch that, it's pretty damn funny. She does this dance on her hind legs, front paws up in the air, while making this whine of delight that just kills me every time. The only unfortunate of this is that Lexie has learned to throw food directly at Kaya and takes a certain joy from it. Not that Lexie is hurting from lack of food or anything, have you seen her belly?

Another good point of having Kaya around is not having to vacuum as much. Lexie likes to eat cheerios off of the coffee table in the mornings. She also likes to throw them all over the living room. But, there is the trusty Kaya, following her around like Nature's own Hoover. God bless her.

Now I can wear short shorts (weather update at bottom)

So I bought some Nair and let S have his ways with my bushes...er, I mean legs. I think he enjoyed it too much, I kept having to yell, "don't rub it in. You aren't supposed to rub it in!" And, damn if the crap worked. My legs are smooth and irritation free, well the areas I can reach are anyway. Kudos to Nair for finally getting that awful Nair-smell out of their product. And for getting that burn-the-shit-out-of-Christina's-skin formula fixed. I considered myself brave for even trying Nair again after all the trauma I went through in high school with it. But the bottle promised "new and improved" and yes, they did deliver.

Of course, now that I am hair-free, the sun has gone into hiding. So much for wearing those cute shorts I just bought. *sigh* Well, I know it'll be back, I just hope the shorts still fit when it does. Wouldn't that just be my luck. I don't think I'll have a problem though, seeing how they are maternity shorts with that to-die-for paneling we all love.

Pregnancy still moving along. I now have constant heartburn and Braxton Hicks contractions all day long. I never had them (that I know of) with Lexie, so the first few freaked me out. I knew what they were, but still it felt weird. They don't hurt thank God, but annoy me still the same. Only 72 days to go...woohoo!

Holy shit! It's raining so freakin' hard I'm afraid to go outside for fear of being swept away in the downpour. I think God Himself is angry with California. The lights are flickering and I think I heard thunder. Guess I'll just pack those shorts away.