So this is normally the part of my birth story where I talk about all the complications and how badly I hemorrhaged afterwards. Except this time I had a doctor that actually listened when I told her my history and it was a game changer. I think I lost less blood than I did with E. It was amazing to not only feel okay minutes after delivery, but to have a calm delivery room. No one rushed the baby away, no extra help rushing in, just a quiet room.
Birth Story Part II - Active Labor/Birth
Despite willing it to be true, I didn’t have a baby by morning. Both E & G were born on a Sunday at 2am, but this baby decided to be different. I also didn’t get a ton of sleep either. I wasn’t feeling painful contractions, but lying down was uncomfortable. Unless I was sitting up or walking around, I’d get a little crampy, just enough that I couldn’t fall asleep. I think I managed to sleep from 11:30 - 1 am and again from 3:45 - 4:30 am when contractions slowed down a bit. Because they slowed down, I got a second dose of medication at that time.
I was feeling a bit frustrated and impatient (as was everyone who knew I was at the hospital waiting for updates!) but I managed to eat a granola bar and some apple juice and started to get my mind around the fact I might be here for a while.
Birth Story Part I - Early Labor
I was rereading G’s birth story, and laughed that I said the labor went too fast. I guess I had it coming then. Third babies have a reputation for being tricky. First babies take a while, second babies are quick, and third babies do what they want. They’ve got extra room and can flip all over, and apparently are in no rush to be born. This one wasn’t, anyway. Just absolutely did not want to be born. Usually leading up to your due date there will be some sign that labor is approaching, but not with this one. Usually at some point during labor the nurses will let you know that the baby isn’t happy and we either need to move positions or work towards a quicker delivery. Not this one - every time they checked her she was perfectly happy.
Almost There
Summer’s coming to an end, which also means so is our time as a family of four. Both things that make me think about last minute things we should cross off our bucket list.
One last trip to get ice cream, for example. So on a recent weekend I thought we’d go to an easy place down the road with a large parking lot and plenty of seating. However, the kids found out where we were going, and both objected - they may be little, but they’ve got opinions. They’ll apparently only go to ice cream shops that offer chocolate dip. To be fair, I agree with them, so we headed off to a further ice cream shop (that happens to have the most annoying parking situation) to get our black raspberry soft serve with chocolate dip on the top!
A New Nursery
Belly Art
A few years and pregnancies ago, a friend gifted me a copy of The Belly Art Project book - signed and personalized, no less! It’s full of super cool pictures of women with their pregnant bellies painted with all sorts of creative ideas. It’s super cute, and something I always wanted to do, but a few things were holding me back.
First, I wasn’t sure who would do it. Could I paint my own belly? Talk a friend into it? And then if I did, I wasn’t sure what I should paint. So many of the ones in the book are either super personalized or very clever, and I was having a hard time coming up with something that wouldn’t be completely random.
Someone's Not Behaving
Apparently this baby was listening when I mentioned that I was feeling pretty good this pregnancy, and again when I jokingly called this baby my favorite and easiest child. I should have learned from E & G by now, because they love to prove me wrong, and apparently baby does too.
At my last appointment I mentioned two things to the midwife which made her pause and make a face - I was feeling extremely nauseous again, and baby’s movements had changed. I think she actually said “uh oh” before seeing if her hunch was right.
The End is (Not so) Near
So the good news is that I’m recovered from my cold and feeling much better. Iron has kicked in, so I’m not living in a fog anymore either. The bad news is that I’m just done. I never understood needing to go on maternity leave early, but I think I might need to this time. I’m big and slow, yes, but mentally I’m just at the end of what I’m able to do. My feet have also reached that point - I can’t stand for very long before they start hurting either.
Let's Do an Update
So here’s what I’ve learned about iron infusions (which I’m still in the middle of - not done yet!). They’re amazing and have given me a lot of energy back. I can actually stay awake for most of the day now, which I couldn’t say before them. They’re also super weird, and do things like make my limbs heavy and feel odd as the iron flows through my body - and yes you can feel it. My arm was getting uncomfortably heavy and feeling a lot of pressure when the nurse was inserting the iron one day, and she flushed the IV with saline and I could feel the iron leaving my arm.
The iron also sucks all the water from your body, dehydrating you like crazy. (Which is also what the baby is doing). Knowing this, I drank about 60oz of water before my appointment, and still needed to drink another 60oz after until I finally felt hydrated again. It’s a lot of water.
Anyone Else Taste Metal?
I’m going to purposely look at this update as a good thing. Yes, I’ll be in the hospital five times in the next two weeks, but I’m thinking about how thankful I am that my doctors realized something was wrong, and had a solution to fix it. I’m thankful that I’m going to start to hopefully feel a lot better in the next few weeks, and get some energy back!
Sugar Sugar
Anyone who’s been around for my previous pregnancies knows my history with the glucose tests - as in I’ve never passed the 1 hour test and have had to take the 3 hour test each pregnancy (which I passed for both E and G!)
So this time I talked to one of the doctors about my history and whether jumping to the 3 hour test would make sense. She agreed, and so it was scheduled during a time I needed labs drawn anyway. So that’s how I found myself enjoying my day off in the lab of the local hospital.
Pregnancy is so Fun
How about a random pregnancy facts and symptoms post?
We all know the fun fact that blood volumes increases in pregnancy, right? Up to 50% more than a woman usually has in her body, which can lead to some weird symptoms. Like pulsatile tinnitus. The current bane of my existence. All day long, instead of hearing co-workers, my children, or the TV, I hear “Woosh woosh woosh woosh.” And if I dare bend over, walk up the stairs or do, well, anything.. it gets louder and appears in both ears instead of just one.
Oh Right, I'm Pregnant
Second trimester - the small window of time where I can go moments or hours where I feel normal and forget I’m pregnant. Which I realize sounds crazy because there’s also some baby doing cannonballs in my belly, but it’s easy to be distracted when you’re chasing a 2 and 3 year old around.
Sure there are symptoms - pains here and there, I’m bigger and slower and quickly out of breath. Heartburn is returning, it’s harder to eat big meals - all things I’ve dealt with before. Maybe that’s why I can still feel “normal.” Although the tinnitus is new, and one symptom I definitely would be okay with going away…
Anatomy Scan
St. Patrick's Day
Second Trimester
I’m at a weird stage in pregnancy. I guess you could call it a good stage, though. My nausea has pretty much subsided to a manageable level, and I was actually able to wean off the medication that I was on until 22 weeks with G. It came on harder, faster and way worse than previous pregnancies, but didn’t stick around as long, so I’ll take that. I do still feel off every day, with something or other just not making me feel 100% well. It’s fairly common for me in pregnancy, though, so that’s not too bad either. I’m still a bit too early to feel the baby moving yet, and I’m really not that big, so I’m in that in between space where I could forget that I’m pregnant. All of the symptoms I have are odd, and related to pregnancy, but don’t make me feel pregnant. I’m starving but nothing tastes good and almost everything upsets my stomach. I’m exhausted all the time and take lots of naps, but I have major insomnia in the middle of the night. Etc, Etc.
Another Week
I sat down with the intention to write an update about what we’ve been doing lately. Time has been passing, but since time has no meaning anymore, it’s hard to quantify. I have a lot of half started projects going, that’s for sure.
First I decided it was time to sort through everyone’s clothes. I moved E up to 4T and G up to 3T (they’re honestly the same size, and they weigh the same, but for my sanity this is what we’re doing. Close enough. Except I also decided that they should share a closet now, and the baby will take over G’s closet. Which meant Tom might as well pull out all of the baby clothes from the attic so I could start going through those.
Pregnant in a Pandemic
Time seems to be moving quickly so far, which I think is a good thing. I’m starting to pull out maternity clothes (not so much a bump yet, but definitely bigger), and trying to wean down on how much nausea medication I’m taking daily.
E & G have started to talk daily about the new baby, which is interesting to watch. We never sat them down to say that a baby is coming or that things will change, we just sort of keep it as part of the conversation. When E is passing out things (something he manages to do almost daily), he often will name family members. “This one is for Mama, this one is for me, this one is for G…” and he’ll often name one for Maia, our kitty who died almost a year ago. So it’s not that weird to suddenly be naming one for “baby.” A sort of hypothetical entity that can be named.
Pandemic Life
It’s an old joke at this point in the pandemic, but it’s definitely groundhog day over here. It’s hard to write about anything new, because there’s really nothing new. As our risks increase and the virus has gotten more contagious, we’re leaving the house even less than before. We’re now ordering groceries online and having them delivered to the house, we haven’t seen anyone in months, and while we might have braved a trip to Target occasionally before (okay I’ve gone twice in this pandemic), we’re no longer doing that.
And while I’m cheering everyone I see get the vaccine, since they’re little bits of hope to hold on to, it’s hard too. We know it’s going to be months and months before we’re offered it, and it’s not easy to watch others move on with their life and get to see people and do things that we can’t. And won’t be able to do.
Again With the Snow
Snow, snow, so much snow.
The most in the state, to be exact. I’m not sure how that happened. We were right on the edge of predictions of “a lot” and “not a lot” of snow, and we ended up with 5” more than the upper limit of predictions. Towns next to us got half as much as we did. Apparently we live in a snow pocket. A wonderful place to be when you have a broken snow blower, and a driveway that a plow truck can’t clear.