Haha! Caught up finally! Kinda...
What happens to people's filters when they see a pregnant woman? On Thursday I had a nice, grandmotherly woman come into the office to give John a check. John wasn't there, but she decided to talk to me for a while instead. Right before lunch. (Hungry pregnant woman=grumpy pregnant woman...don't worry, I behaved). First she tested my temper with the whole Chick-Fil-A thing, asking if I heard about it and saying how she had wanted to go down there, but there were just too many people. Having already had an exhausting "discussion" about gay marriage with my boss that morning, I managed to just nod and smile and didn't trust myself to open my mouth. (For more on my views and why this is NOT a first amendment issue, I recommend this article). Then she chatted a bit more and upon finding out I was pregnant (btw, first she thought I was my boss' wife, then she thought their 6 year old son was my son), she actually asked me if my pregnancy was planned. W. T. F?! Not only is this a woman I had met about 5 minutes earlier, but that's an incredibly private, invasive and inappropriate question, even for a friend. I like to think I opted for a non-snarky comeback because she was a client, but honestly, I was just too flabbergasted to respond with anything other than "Yes, it was planned." This is my first experience with a wildly inappropriate response to my pregnancy, though through various blogs and articles it seems to be rampant. And it's not just an American phenomenon; in the UK, a clerk at Tesco's tried to refuse to sell a pregnant woman unpasteurized cheddar cheese (perfectly safe). I've read other stories of comments of "You're so big, you'll never make it to your due date," "Are you sure you're not carrying twins?," "Are you sure you're pregnant? You're so tiny," and worst of all "How much weight have you gained?" Maybe I am just over-sensitive, but I feel like these comments defy every social rule out there. Every pregnancy is different and presents differently, no woman wants to hear that something might be wrong with her baby, and in what world is it appropriate to ask about weight gain?? And given the social conception that pregnancy causes 9 months of nausea and crazy, hormonal emotions, you would think most people would be even more sensitive to these kinds of comments. It was none of her business either way, but I had to wonder why she cared. And then I had to wonder why she asked. The only reason I could come up with is that I look young. But I don't look extremely young, and again, it's none of her business. She doesn't know me, had never met me before and is probably (hopefully) never going to see me again, so why does she care about whether my pregnancy was planned or not? This happened again with the receptionist at the veterinarian's office. How the hell is this considered appropriate?!
Alright, mini-rant over. We had our first childbirth class on Thursday night. It was an odd, entertaining experience. We are taking the 3 week "Childbirth 101" class through St Joseph's Hospital, which is where I'll be delivering. Our instructor is certified in Lamaze, so I'm sure some of those techniques will be incorporated. She's an older woman with 3 daughters and two grandsons. She made a lot of pop culture references, in what seemed to be an attempt to show that she was current and up to date. But some of them were hilarious. She made a comment about the men's synchronized diving events at the Olympics and their physiology. Followed by a comment regarding how small those speedos are and how nicely they show off their bodies. Now, I definitely don't disagree with those comments, but coming from this grandmotherly figure it was completely unexpected and awesome. She also made some comment about the book "Shades of Gray" and how she couldn't ready it on vacation because it was making her blush and she was too embarrassed (this followed by "And I've read some pretty raunchy stuff in my day"). Most of the information presented was pretty basic, and the video was horribly dated (with the same music as used in Safeguarding God's Children!) Though she said that there was no one right way to have a baby, it felt like she was really pushing natural, unmedicated birth, probably due to her Lamaze background. I'm fine with that; I'm aiming for a natural birth and figure my experience with kidney stones gives me an edge, lol. We had some activities where we worked with another couple: coming up with activities to distract ourselves during early labour (so we stay home b/c women who come to the hospital earlier are more likely to have a c-section) and a list of "clear liquids" for when you're supposed to stop eating solids. It was interesting, but putting people together to make one list doesn't always work. For example, going for a walk might work for the other couple, but I can barely walk now, so I don't think that's going to help. Crocheting or knitting for me would be great, but the other woman might not know how to do that. Reading is another one: I can lose myself in a book very easily, but being in pain and reading for James would be all put impossible. It was funny to pretend to breathe through contractions on a birthing ball, with one leg on a chair or doing pelvic tilts with your back against the wall. Especially since she would remind all the "coaches" to say something nice or encouraging..."Just a few hundred metres more" was the best Olympic-related suggestion. I did misunderstand at one point and thought I was supposed to say something nice to James, so I told him he smelled nice. He does, but he couldn't say anything nice to me for laughing. I'm not sure the class made me feel any better about my labour and delivery fears; that was done by James' co-worker's daughter, who had her baby at St. Joe's about a year ago. However, it was informative (did you know they used to knock women out with gas to deliver their babies?) and we'll see how it goes the next two weeks. I think it'll be a good class to have gone to, though I won't know how helpful it will be until baby day.
I had my monthly OB visit this week again, and it was a little stressful. It looks like Baby L is growing a lot since I gained another 10 pounds this month. I'm still within what I'm supposed to weight, since I only gained 4 pounds the first 20 weeks, but it's stressful either way. I need to just stop worrying. Like James said, I can't exactly start a diet right now, and I'm eating healthier than I ever have. My main concern was my hip. It has not been getting better; in fact, it's been getting progressively worse and nothing has helped. We returned the maternity belt because it hadn't helped at all and my next chiropractic visit is going to be my last until after the birth because it just isn't helping. I'm in a lot of pain regardless of whether I'm sitting, standing, walking or even lying down now. It's not a constant pain, just twinges when I move or am positioned a certain way and it's definitely not coming from my back. It's inside my hip joint and it hurts to badly. So much so that the doctor prescribed me tylenol with codeine to take for the pain. All I can do is take the pain medication when I'm going to do something like walk and hope it dulls the pain a bit. Unfortunately, based on the first day I took it, it doesn't do that much. Not enough for me to start exercising again at least. Added in to the pain of walking are my leg cramps. I hadn't had them for a while, but then Friday morning I had 5 within an hour and a half. Definitely not a fun way to wake up. The thing is, my calves were still sore on Sunday...sore enough that walking hurt. I've rubbed in the sore muscle rubs and tried massaging them and tried stretching them, but it doesn't seem to help. We bought some bananas (I'm finally giving in, though I am freezing them first) and we'll see if that helps. If not, I'll have to call in to the doctor's office to see what to do.
Friday was busy. We also test-drove a Ford Explorer and took the pups to the vet. Some quick thoughts on the Explorer: It wasn't as smooth as a drive, the turn signals were a pain and badly designed, the MPG wasn't great and the only good points were the colour (actual blue instead of of a blue-black) and the extra goodies (sync, two panel sunroof, etc). It was overpriced for what it was--the only good thing were the options, which made it too expensive. The vet visit was similar: I expected much better considering how much be paid. Both pups were overdue for their boosters and yearly exams, but Moose had also started licking his paws obsessively. His paws are red and raw, and I didn't know what to do since we can't watch him 24 hours a day; I wanted to take him in before his paws started bleeding.
They're both pretty healthy: Pippin ridiculously so and Moose, well as much as a purebred with weird legs (and neck) can be. Even the vet thought Moose's little lion's ruff was weird: it seems that's where he stores his excess fat instead of around his belly. He could do with more exercise, since he's lazy, but overall he's healthy. As for the paws, allergies were the most likely culprit, especially since he's had allergic reactions before. But we hadn't changed anything, at least not recently enough to coincide with the paw-licking. They wanted to do a scraping and test it for bacteria, fungus and mites, and regardless of the results give him an injection for the allergies and prescriptions for an antibiotic and anti-fungal medication. Looking at the prices (and the fact that they wouldn't wait for the results before administering medication) we decided to try the children's benadryl route for a few weeks and come back if necessary. So Moose gets a shot of bubble gum flavoured allergy medication when his paw-licking gets out of control. Considering how much he loves the stuff, if we dipped his paws in it, our problems would be over, but that would be messy :) Plus, when we got home, we realized we'd changed his treats, so it might be that. Or perhaps the bones we'd been giving as treats. So we'll take those away and see if it helps at all.
Both pups got their vaccines and their heartworm tests. They took them to the back to administer the vaccines which makes me really nervous, especially when we saw the state Pippin was in the next morning. She's had these boosters before, but this time, when she woke up on Saturday, she was shaking, limping, squealing when you touched her (or tried to put on her harness) and completely uninterested in food. All day long, she spent lethargically lying on the couch, barely moving and threatening to bite (she would never actually bite us) when you got near her right shoulder. Watching her walk was painful, and she was completely uninterested in her toys or regular food. Since she hadn't had anything to eat or drink all day, we cooked her some chicken and rice to get her to eat. Of course, she gulped that down in no time. She was pretty much back to herself by Sunday, though still a bit tender on her shoulder, but it was really upsetting to see her like that. Considering that we spent over $200 on this vet trip and would have spent over $300 if we'd gotten all the recommendations for Moose, I had expected much, much better from the experience. Their commitment to affordable spaying and neutering may still be there, but as far as veterinary care, this has set us back a bit.
James' computer has also been acting weird. I finally went into Apple's genius bar since they completely screwed up my computer when they wiped the hard drive and got the permissions fixed. Then one of mom's parishioners let us borrow his upgrade disc for Snow Leopard (anyone have Lion out there they'd like to share?). After doing the upgrade, my computer was fine, but James' stopped printing and then he discovered that he could no longer access Microsoft Word, since it thought he only had a trial. The genius bar was useless; the guy we saw was completely unhelpful and didn't actually listen to our questions. He wanted us to bring our printer, wireless router, back up drive and both our computers into the store. It was a total waste of time; he eventually just wiped the hard drive and reinstalled a full version of Snow Leopard. When James restored from our backup, Word started working, but the printer still doesn't work. He's un and re-installed the printer drives multiple times to no avail. It seems to send it, but it just sits there, not printing. It's bizarre. So hopefully we can figure that out soon (HP customer service is closed on Sundays).
We spent Sunday afternoon working a bit in the nursery. I got all my craft stuff into little boxes that are labelled and stacked in the closet now. It's still a bit messy since we stopped when I got hot and grouchy from hunger, but it looks so much better! It's really starting to get cleaned up. It felt good to finish so much. During our break, I started the last few coats of the painting I've been putting off finishing for a few weeks now. I finished it on Monday. Monday was also productive. Before storing our wedding box (full of all the cards, the bachelorette party stuff, invitations, etc) I pulled out an invitation, program, our namecards and some other stuff. I'd been meaning to make a collage to hang for a while, but I finally got around to it! It looks really nice, and I can't wait to hang it by our guestbook and pictures we put up. I also started the pumpkin hat on Monday. It should turn out pretty well, though I've already lost one stitch and had to unravel a few rows. Hopefully it'll look nice, but if it doesn't I'll have a bunch of yarn leftover to make another one...or three...until it looks nice. Monday night I started having sharp stabbing pains in my belly that shot down, hurt when I touched my stomach and got the point where I couldn't stand up straight. James wanted to take me to the hospital but after my last experience there, I didn't really feel like spending 8 hours at the ER just to be told nothing was wrong and doped up with more painkillers. [I'm getting really sick of "bandaid" solutions that don't actually solve the problem itself] They went away when I laid down and didn't come back Tuesday morning, so I guess it's just one of those weird pregnancy things; anyone else had this? (Everything I read online said contractions, but this didn't feel like contractions at all). All in all, it's been a busy week, but fun and pretty productive.
Update:
What happens to people's filters when they see a pregnant woman? On Thursday I had a nice, grandmotherly woman come into the office to give John a check. John wasn't there, but she decided to talk to me for a while instead. Right before lunch. (Hungry pregnant woman=grumpy pregnant woman...don't worry, I behaved). First she tested my temper with the whole Chick-Fil-A thing, asking if I heard about it and saying how she had wanted to go down there, but there were just too many people. Having already had an exhausting "discussion" about gay marriage with my boss that morning, I managed to just nod and smile and didn't trust myself to open my mouth. (For more on my views and why this is NOT a first amendment issue, I recommend this article). Then she chatted a bit more and upon finding out I was pregnant (btw, first she thought I was my boss' wife, then she thought their 6 year old son was my son), she actually asked me if my pregnancy was planned. W. T. F?! Not only is this a woman I had met about 5 minutes earlier, but that's an incredibly private, invasive and inappropriate question, even for a friend. I like to think I opted for a non-snarky comeback because she was a client, but honestly, I was just too flabbergasted to respond with anything other than "Yes, it was planned." This is my first experience with a wildly inappropriate response to my pregnancy, though through various blogs and articles it seems to be rampant. And it's not just an American phenomenon; in the UK, a clerk at Tesco's tried to refuse to sell a pregnant woman unpasteurized cheddar cheese (perfectly safe). I've read other stories of comments of "You're so big, you'll never make it to your due date," "Are you sure you're not carrying twins?," "Are you sure you're pregnant? You're so tiny," and worst of all "How much weight have you gained?" Maybe I am just over-sensitive, but I feel like these comments defy every social rule out there. Every pregnancy is different and presents differently, no woman wants to hear that something might be wrong with her baby, and in what world is it appropriate to ask about weight gain?? And given the social conception that pregnancy causes 9 months of nausea and crazy, hormonal emotions, you would think most people would be even more sensitive to these kinds of comments. It was none of her business either way, but I had to wonder why she cared. And then I had to wonder why she asked. The only reason I could come up with is that I look young. But I don't look extremely young, and again, it's none of her business. She doesn't know me, had never met me before and is probably (hopefully) never going to see me again, so why does she care about whether my pregnancy was planned or not? This happened again with the receptionist at the veterinarian's office. How the hell is this considered appropriate?!
Alright, mini-rant over. We had our first childbirth class on Thursday night. It was an odd, entertaining experience. We are taking the 3 week "Childbirth 101" class through St Joseph's Hospital, which is where I'll be delivering. Our instructor is certified in Lamaze, so I'm sure some of those techniques will be incorporated. She's an older woman with 3 daughters and two grandsons. She made a lot of pop culture references, in what seemed to be an attempt to show that she was current and up to date. But some of them were hilarious. She made a comment about the men's synchronized diving events at the Olympics and their physiology. Followed by a comment regarding how small those speedos are and how nicely they show off their bodies. Now, I definitely don't disagree with those comments, but coming from this grandmotherly figure it was completely unexpected and awesome. She also made some comment about the book "Shades of Gray" and how she couldn't ready it on vacation because it was making her blush and she was too embarrassed (this followed by "And I've read some pretty raunchy stuff in my day"). Most of the information presented was pretty basic, and the video was horribly dated (with the same music as used in Safeguarding God's Children!) Though she said that there was no one right way to have a baby, it felt like she was really pushing natural, unmedicated birth, probably due to her Lamaze background. I'm fine with that; I'm aiming for a natural birth and figure my experience with kidney stones gives me an edge, lol. We had some activities where we worked with another couple: coming up with activities to distract ourselves during early labour (so we stay home b/c women who come to the hospital earlier are more likely to have a c-section) and a list of "clear liquids" for when you're supposed to stop eating solids. It was interesting, but putting people together to make one list doesn't always work. For example, going for a walk might work for the other couple, but I can barely walk now, so I don't think that's going to help. Crocheting or knitting for me would be great, but the other woman might not know how to do that. Reading is another one: I can lose myself in a book very easily, but being in pain and reading for James would be all put impossible. It was funny to pretend to breathe through contractions on a birthing ball, with one leg on a chair or doing pelvic tilts with your back against the wall. Especially since she would remind all the "coaches" to say something nice or encouraging..."Just a few hundred metres more" was the best Olympic-related suggestion. I did misunderstand at one point and thought I was supposed to say something nice to James, so I told him he smelled nice. He does, but he couldn't say anything nice to me for laughing. I'm not sure the class made me feel any better about my labour and delivery fears; that was done by James' co-worker's daughter, who had her baby at St. Joe's about a year ago. However, it was informative (did you know they used to knock women out with gas to deliver their babies?) and we'll see how it goes the next two weeks. I think it'll be a good class to have gone to, though I won't know how helpful it will be until baby day.
I had my monthly OB visit this week again, and it was a little stressful. It looks like Baby L is growing a lot since I gained another 10 pounds this month. I'm still within what I'm supposed to weight, since I only gained 4 pounds the first 20 weeks, but it's stressful either way. I need to just stop worrying. Like James said, I can't exactly start a diet right now, and I'm eating healthier than I ever have. My main concern was my hip. It has not been getting better; in fact, it's been getting progressively worse and nothing has helped. We returned the maternity belt because it hadn't helped at all and my next chiropractic visit is going to be my last until after the birth because it just isn't helping. I'm in a lot of pain regardless of whether I'm sitting, standing, walking or even lying down now. It's not a constant pain, just twinges when I move or am positioned a certain way and it's definitely not coming from my back. It's inside my hip joint and it hurts to badly. So much so that the doctor prescribed me tylenol with codeine to take for the pain. All I can do is take the pain medication when I'm going to do something like walk and hope it dulls the pain a bit. Unfortunately, based on the first day I took it, it doesn't do that much. Not enough for me to start exercising again at least. Added in to the pain of walking are my leg cramps. I hadn't had them for a while, but then Friday morning I had 5 within an hour and a half. Definitely not a fun way to wake up. The thing is, my calves were still sore on Sunday...sore enough that walking hurt. I've rubbed in the sore muscle rubs and tried massaging them and tried stretching them, but it doesn't seem to help. We bought some bananas (I'm finally giving in, though I am freezing them first) and we'll see if that helps. If not, I'll have to call in to the doctor's office to see what to do.
Friday was busy. We also test-drove a Ford Explorer and took the pups to the vet. Some quick thoughts on the Explorer: It wasn't as smooth as a drive, the turn signals were a pain and badly designed, the MPG wasn't great and the only good points were the colour (actual blue instead of of a blue-black) and the extra goodies (sync, two panel sunroof, etc). It was overpriced for what it was--the only good thing were the options, which made it too expensive. The vet visit was similar: I expected much better considering how much be paid. Both pups were overdue for their boosters and yearly exams, but Moose had also started licking his paws obsessively. His paws are red and raw, and I didn't know what to do since we can't watch him 24 hours a day; I wanted to take him in before his paws started bleeding.
They're both pretty healthy: Pippin ridiculously so and Moose, well as much as a purebred with weird legs (and neck) can be. Even the vet thought Moose's little lion's ruff was weird: it seems that's where he stores his excess fat instead of around his belly. He could do with more exercise, since he's lazy, but overall he's healthy. As for the paws, allergies were the most likely culprit, especially since he's had allergic reactions before. But we hadn't changed anything, at least not recently enough to coincide with the paw-licking. They wanted to do a scraping and test it for bacteria, fungus and mites, and regardless of the results give him an injection for the allergies and prescriptions for an antibiotic and anti-fungal medication. Looking at the prices (and the fact that they wouldn't wait for the results before administering medication) we decided to try the children's benadryl route for a few weeks and come back if necessary. So Moose gets a shot of bubble gum flavoured allergy medication when his paw-licking gets out of control. Considering how much he loves the stuff, if we dipped his paws in it, our problems would be over, but that would be messy :) Plus, when we got home, we realized we'd changed his treats, so it might be that. Or perhaps the bones we'd been giving as treats. So we'll take those away and see if it helps at all.
Both pups got their vaccines and their heartworm tests. They took them to the back to administer the vaccines which makes me really nervous, especially when we saw the state Pippin was in the next morning. She's had these boosters before, but this time, when she woke up on Saturday, she was shaking, limping, squealing when you touched her (or tried to put on her harness) and completely uninterested in food. All day long, she spent lethargically lying on the couch, barely moving and threatening to bite (she would never actually bite us) when you got near her right shoulder. Watching her walk was painful, and she was completely uninterested in her toys or regular food. Since she hadn't had anything to eat or drink all day, we cooked her some chicken and rice to get her to eat. Of course, she gulped that down in no time. She was pretty much back to herself by Sunday, though still a bit tender on her shoulder, but it was really upsetting to see her like that. Considering that we spent over $200 on this vet trip and would have spent over $300 if we'd gotten all the recommendations for Moose, I had expected much, much better from the experience. Their commitment to affordable spaying and neutering may still be there, but as far as veterinary care, this has set us back a bit.
James' computer has also been acting weird. I finally went into Apple's genius bar since they completely screwed up my computer when they wiped the hard drive and got the permissions fixed. Then one of mom's parishioners let us borrow his upgrade disc for Snow Leopard (anyone have Lion out there they'd like to share?). After doing the upgrade, my computer was fine, but James' stopped printing and then he discovered that he could no longer access Microsoft Word, since it thought he only had a trial. The genius bar was useless; the guy we saw was completely unhelpful and didn't actually listen to our questions. He wanted us to bring our printer, wireless router, back up drive and both our computers into the store. It was a total waste of time; he eventually just wiped the hard drive and reinstalled a full version of Snow Leopard. When James restored from our backup, Word started working, but the printer still doesn't work. He's un and re-installed the printer drives multiple times to no avail. It seems to send it, but it just sits there, not printing. It's bizarre. So hopefully we can figure that out soon (HP customer service is closed on Sundays).
We spent Sunday afternoon working a bit in the nursery. I got all my craft stuff into little boxes that are labelled and stacked in the closet now. It's still a bit messy since we stopped when I got hot and grouchy from hunger, but it looks so much better! It's really starting to get cleaned up. It felt good to finish so much. During our break, I started the last few coats of the painting I've been putting off finishing for a few weeks now. I finished it on Monday. Monday was also productive. Before storing our wedding box (full of all the cards, the bachelorette party stuff, invitations, etc) I pulled out an invitation, program, our namecards and some other stuff. I'd been meaning to make a collage to hang for a while, but I finally got around to it! It looks really nice, and I can't wait to hang it by our guestbook and pictures we put up. I also started the pumpkin hat on Monday. It should turn out pretty well, though I've already lost one stitch and had to unravel a few rows. Hopefully it'll look nice, but if it doesn't I'll have a bunch of yarn leftover to make another one...or three...until it looks nice. Monday night I started having sharp stabbing pains in my belly that shot down, hurt when I touched my stomach and got the point where I couldn't stand up straight. James wanted to take me to the hospital but after my last experience there, I didn't really feel like spending 8 hours at the ER just to be told nothing was wrong and doped up with more painkillers. [I'm getting really sick of "bandaid" solutions that don't actually solve the problem itself] They went away when I laid down and didn't come back Tuesday morning, so I guess it's just one of those weird pregnancy things; anyone else had this? (Everything I read online said contractions, but this didn't feel like contractions at all). All in all, it's been a busy week, but fun and pretty productive.
Update:
How far along: 29 weeks
Total weight gain: +23
Favourite clothes: The pair of James' boxers I snagged are still amazingly comfortable
Sleeping: The pillow my parents got me is really helpful, but I feel like I'm crushing my ribs, so I'm constantly turning from side to side, and therefore not sleeping
Best moment: Chili cheese tots from Sonic are like heaven! (no really, they are!)
Worst moment: My mini-meltdown at my OB appointment, Pippin's horrible vaccine reaction
Miss anything: We were at Trader Joe's and this guy opened his trunk and a bottle of tequila fell out and spilled. It smelled so good...
Cravings: Onion rings, pineapple (so good!), avocado
New symptoms: had a bit of heartburn and the leg cramps can stop any time now
Looking forward to: The Scottish games and seeing my parents
Pregnancy brain moments: I forget what I was telling James, but for some unknown reason, I told him I couldn't do what I had planned because I cut myself while juicing a lemon on the apple corer. Whatever I had planned, it had nothing to do with lemons or apple corers, and I never cut myself...
Listening to: No particular songs this week, just my celtic rock in general
Crafting: Finished my second washcloth! Finished the four quadrant painting finally!
Baby projects: Still working on cleaning up the nursery and started the pumpkin hat!
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| 29 Weeks: Wallaby is the size of a butternut squash |
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| 29 Week profile shot |
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| 29 week belly I may need a new shirt soon... |
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