What’s in a name?

I need to remember at times that there are people who read this post that sometimes have not seen or experienced what I have and so are a little clueless as to where my humor may come from.  Case in point has been my reference to a “dildo cam” in a couple of recent posts.  Below I’ve found a picture of one for you.  I’ll let you figure out which of the two I’ve been referring to.  (Hint: It’s NOT the T shaped one ) The official name is a Transvaginal probe — yet I think my name is a little more accurate.  If you can think of another name, I am certainly open to suggestions.

Sticker Shock

Today one of my co-workers recommended that I take a look at child care soon as some have a waiting list.  At first I thought she was kidding until I started to call.  First, the going rate for a newborn is $175/wk — I’ll do the math for you — It’s $700 a month.  A MONTH!!  I honestly can see why some people stay home with their kids if they didn’t make that much to begin with.  Otherwise you’re working just to put the kids in daycare.  I discovered this little gem of info about an hour ago and I’m actually sick to my stomach at the thought.  If it was a purchase, this is where I’d walk away.  However, we’re talking about one’s kid’s daycare here — and I can’t exactly leave the tyke at home on his own and hope for the best.  So I guess I’ll be shelling it out come next year.

Second, there seems to be a waiting list of 6 months to more than a year to get into the good places here in town.  The one I’d like to get into is at the local college and routinely has a waiting list longer than a year.  So that means I’ll have to look at the 2 alternatives and see if they have openings.

I think maybe I should open a day care center….cause with the rates they charge I should be rich in just a couple of years.

The REAL reason why people wait

I’ve recently discovered the reason why people wait to tell family and friends that they are pregnant.  It has nothing to do with the fact that miscarriage is higher in the first trimester.  That’s just a facade to hide the true reason.  No the REAL reason why people wait till the 2nd trimester is it’s 3 less months that they have to listen to other people telling them what they are doing wrong.  This could be everything from what they eat, drink, exercise, even how much or little they sleep.

Case in point — I went out to a Japanese restaurant with some friends that I’ve made in the different offices where I work.  I RARELY drink soda.  I also don’t drink coffee, nor am I a big chocolate eater.  So I probably have less caffeine in my diet than almost anyone I know, or even you know.  When the waitress came to take our drink order I asked if they had lemonade to which she replied their only drinks were tea (which I don’t care for) Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, or Mountain Dew.  With such few options I chose Mountain Dew, as I do not care for water when I eat food.  Next thing I know 3 of my 4 friends are on my case about the caffeine content in the drink I ordered.  (Please take note that it was only 3 of the girls all of whom DON’T have children) Interestingly enough the one that DOES have children was smart enough to keep her mouth shut….this time.  I explained that you can have some caffeine when you are pregnant equal to about 1 cup of coffee, to which it was pointed out that Mountain Dew is equivalent to a few cups of coffee.  After I pointedly ignored this comment we went about our lunch.

This is just one of several types of comments I’ve had thrown my way.  I’ve also been suffering from insomnia, to the point where some nights I get maybe 2 hours of sleep.  The worse part of this is the pregnancy hormones make you tired.  So I’m exhausted, but can’t sleep — very annoying.  One of my friends felt the need to tell me that I, “really need to try to sleep as it’s not good for the baby for me to be so tired”.  You don’t say.  Tell me, does anyone know the definition of insomnia?  Oh THAT’S right, it’s being tired and trying to sleep but not being able to.  Thanks.  Really.  Your advice was such a big help.

I’ve also heard that, “I don’t enough greens, there is a high fat content in some of my food choices, that I should go to the gym and do some cardio (I’m sure my knee would just love that), that I just HAVE to do a lamaz and/or birthing class, and that an epidural is just me being selfish….”

So, if you are one of those “kind” souls that feels that you know what’s best for pregnant woman and want to share that knowledge….Created a website, blog, or maybe a pregnancy support group.  But don’t feel the need to give unsolicited advice.  Especially if you’ve never been pregnant yourself, cause you have absolutely no creditability to us pregos.  And if you’ve had children before, you should just know better — Remember all the crap…..I mean advice….you were told?

The start of many offerings

I have been around pregnant woman at work many times.  And I can honestly say that the wicked side of me got a little bit of amusement when something would make them turn green and have to make a run for the nearest bathroom.  I did work with one girl at AAA several years back though that I had a great deal of sympathy for.  She couldn’t keep anything down for the whole 9 months.  Ugggh.

Now I have admittedly been a little smug over the past few weeks as I have not had any pregnancy symptoms other than being tired and having some insomnia (which is probably where the tiredness comes from).  I had been lucky.  However my luck ended on Saturday.  I went to my friend’s daughter’s birthday party and had been feeling a very minor upset stomach.  I figured that this came from the fact that it was 2pm and I had eaten nothing up to that point.  This is not uncommon for me as I normally only eat one or two small meals on the weekends.  At the party I only ate the cake and ice cream aside from a little bit of ziti.  When I went home I had a ham sandwich for dinner and was sitting upstairs when I started to get the sweats.  You know how this feels people.  Your stomach starts rolling and your body breaks out in a sweat and you KNOW that whatever is in your stomach has to come out.  Right.  Now.

So I went to the bathroom and started to dry heave.  This is just an awful feeling by the way — actually throwing up is much more satisfying.  I’ll save you from the truly nasty parts but I do have to share the fact that ‘S’ has been a real trooper.  I didn’t ask him to, but he stayed with me and was rubbing my back the whole time.  This is a marked difference from a girlfriend of mine who’s husband actually took a picture of her bent over the toilet tossing up her accounts.  When I was close to finishing he got a warm wet wash cloth for me to wash my face with and put toothpaste on my tooth brush and even found me a change of clothes cause I had been sweating really bad in what I had been wearing.  Unfortunately, we had to do this all over again on Sunday night as well.  I had been hoping that I just gotten too much sugar on Saturday but that was not to be the case.

This morning, I must have been looking a little off since one of the webmasters here at work took one look at me and asked how I was feeling.  Unfortunately I had just wanted to toss my cookies again but I had a bowl of cereal instead and that seem to do the trick cause I feel just fine now.  My smugness is now a thing of the past and I’m sure that I shall be making many more offerings to my porcelain God.  Lets hope that it’s only for the next month or two.

My Polly Pocket Investment

I  would consider myself a pretty generous gift giver.  My sister and family might dispute that since they don’t ever get anything unless I’m out there for a holiday as I hate shipping things.  One of these days I’ll get used to actually ordering stuff online for people as gifts.  Anyway, I debated about doing this post because 2 good friends of mine who are involved in this “investment” also read this blog.  But I’m hoping that they know me well enough to know that I’m not mocking them, but rather the item in question.  And I know you’re not suppose to say how much you spent for a gift but I kind of have to throw that out there in order to make my point here.

I have been invited to a friend of mine’s 4 year old daughters birthday this weekend.  This is the same friend that I have plans of leaving a fertility doll at her house.  Another one of our friends e-mailed me and asked if I wanted to go in halves with her on the gift.  She also has a couple of kids and so is in a far better position to get a gift considering I was just given a vague gift idea of something that is princess related.  I know, not real descriptive to those of us without children….yet.  So of course I jumped at her suggestion as it saved me from having to go to the store and hunt for something on my own.  I figured that my share would be around $10-$15.  I just got an email from her.  You want to know what my “half” is….$23.00.  We just dropped $46.00 on a 4 year old!!  The gift is a set of Polly Pockets.  For those of you who are as clueless as I was, here’s a link on Wikipedia describing what they are.

This seems INSANE to me.  I realize that kids are expensive, and while I will refrain from playing the “back in my day” card as one of my co-works was unable to resist when she mentioned Pogs (remember those) and string for chinese jump rope, I have to think that this just seems like a lot to spend on a girlfriend’s daughter’s gift.  However as my co-investor in the Polly Pockets tells me, apparently all prices are up for toys.

So Jen, if you’re reading this, Jess and I better get some damn good gifts when it comes time for our kid’s birthdays.    Oh, and your daughter better get some good use out of those Polly Pockets.  I say a manditory Polly Pocket play time of 30 minutes every night before she goes to bed.

Health Update

This morning was a busy day.  I had an appointment with my orthopedic surgeon as well as another blood test to test hormone levels to see if I’m still pregnant, and I just got a phone call with the results.  Now I shall keep you in suspense……

The visit with the surgeon went well.  My knee is healing nicely but as the swelling has gone down the grinding has increased.  My knee sounds like a bad hinge when bent.  Based off of this he would like to meet with me next summer to see how it’s feeling then and if I’m still having problems would like to talk about setting up a surgery to remove the hardware.  This freaks me out.  I’m not sure how many of you recall how I was after the surgery but I have NEVER been in so much pain in my entire life.  I would have happily had my leg amputated if it would have brought me some relief from the pain.  I honestly don’t think I could psych myself up for that again.  I would rather deal with a bad leg for the rest of my life.

So about the call….

We are still pregnant.  Hormone levels have increased to where they should be (actually a little more) and so everything is going swimmingly…pun intended.  Still feel good, although I’m pretty turned off to food in general even though I’m not suffering from morning sickness.  I’m hungry but nothing looks, smells, or sounds appealing.  The best I’ve been able to choke down is fruit, milk, and sweet things.  Anything that is green is vile to me.  So we’ll have to see how that goes.

When paranoia sets in

Yesterday was kind of a rough day.  Not only because of miscarriage fears….although honestly that didn’t really hit me until today, but also because I’ve had severe insomnia for the past week.  To put it bluntly, I wasn’t firing on all cylinders yesterday.  So much so, I actually had to go back and re-read my post from yesterday cause I couldn’t remember what I had wrote.  This is of course after 14 hours of sleep last night.  Lord did I feel good this morning.   Although I will probably hit the sack early again tonight cause I’m very tired again.  But my love of sleep is not the point of this post….

As I mentioned above, the miscarriage fears have kind of hit me today.  I’m not upset, but rather I’ve become paranoid about everything that I do to my body.  Part of me is visualizing this fully formed, little peanut size baby (if he’s still there) clinging to my uterus by mere fingertips and just trying to hold on for dear life….literally.  I realize that it doesn’t ACTUALLY hang on there like that, but work with me people, I’m going for a visual here.  I also realize that everything that I’m about to write about what I’ve been doing is NOT rational….but I can’t help myself.

Now because of my broken leg from March I still limp slightly if I walk fast, so I’ve slowed down to a crawl to prevent jarring the little peanut out of place.  Previously I also would walk down steps and kind of have a thud when I would step with my left leg as it still doesn’t have much muscle.  I took one step like that this morning and had a sudden fear of the little guy slipping and have since taken each stair one at a time with the good leg.  Also there is a lot of dust in my office and every day I sneeze at least a couple of times.  I sneezed this afternoon and had a mild heart attack when my stomach muscles contracted for fear that he would be squeezed out.  And I already decided that as soon as I get home today I’m going to lay down as soon as possible as gravity can surely not be his friend right now.

Like I said, mentally I know that none of this is rational.  If he’s even still there, a sneeze is not going to make or break this pregnancy.  But it’s too late — the paranoia has set in.

Highs & Lows

Already only one week into pregnancy I can already see that there are many highs and lows of having a child.  First you have the “OH MY GOD I’M PREGNANT” high , which is immediately followed by the “OH MY GOD I’M PREGNANT” low.  

Then you have highs such as telling the family, starting to pick out names, discovering the sex of your child, shopping for the munchkin, etc.  Then there are the lows — generally not feeling well, tired, ache, worry about every little thing you eat, needles, labor (that should count for 2), and general worry over how the fetus is doing.  Yesterday (Sunday) I was hanging out at the house with ‘S’ and I went to the bathroom early in the afternoon and saw some blood.  I am not one to panic people.  We’re not talking about a lot here so it was kind of a “huh” moment and then I went about my day.  When I went to the bathroom later it was more of the same.  Still not panicking.  I knew I had a doctors appointment this morning so I figured that I would find out what the deal was then.  When I got up this morning, there was once again blood but in addition there was, for lack of a better term, clots.  Okay, now we’re getting kind of concerned….

So went to the doctors and we did the whole appointment with everything going on as normal.  I had told her right at the beginning but aside from a few questions, she didn’t say anything.  At the end she tells me that she wants me to go over to the Women’s Center at the hospital and have an ultrasound, as what I had described could be a sign of an aborted fetus.  Now I’m not a sentimental person, but the term “aborted fetus” is just a little too clinical when they are talking about something in your body.  Now she might have gone this route since I had been very upfront that I didn’t want any beating around the bush with telling me what what going on.  However, she didn’t have to “beat” me with the verbiage.  Let’s go with the word miscarriage here people, we all know what it means.

Anyway, I had to go first to work and drink a crap load of water, sit through a meeting, and then head off to the center.  Got there, hopped on the table and got to first have an external (on top of belly) exam.  This part was actually kind of cool, although I had to pee really bad.  Now in my uterus you could see this peanut shaped dark shadow.  So of course I ask if that’s it.  Now for the record, she’s not allowed to say anything other than to point out organs etc, when you ask.  But I’m a talker, which means even if you have your guard up, give me about 5 min and even if you don’t mean to, I’ll normally get you to share things you meant to keep quiet about.  I’m a friendly person like that and this is my normal, natural self.  However, I’m not above using this helpful trait to get people to “spill” when I want to know something.  Needless to say I was working the friendly angle.  Hard.

Since she couldn’t talk in “official terms”, I asked if we could talk hypothetically, which she said yes.  So I was talking about hypothetically what was she seeing, would the little sac still be there if I was pregnant, all the good stuff, I was getting answers but nothing pointed to yes I was still pregnant or no I was not.  And short of asking outright, which she couldn’t answer, I was stuck.  Next we got to do the internal exam.  This is where they stick a probe (I call it the dildo cam) up your hoo hoo and move it around.  Not any clearer pictures.  Damn.

So after all that fun stuff and getting sent back to the waiting room, I get to wait.  Because the tech had to call up my doctor, tell her, so she could tell me.  This is a stupid process by the way other than it spares the tech from having to answer questions.

The results — Inconclusive

By the way, this might actually be the most annoying word in the dictionary.  I can’t think of once sentence that you could slap the word inconclusive in that would make one happy to hear it.  So next step…. I become a human pin cushion.  The quick and dirty is that I’m way too early to tell (They say 7 weeks, I say 3-4) Which according to my hypothetical conversation with the ultrasound tech, I’m more on target than the doc’s time since they are going off my last period, where as I’m going off conception date.  So on the ultrasound it just looks like a black blob.  Because of this they have to go off of hormone levels.  They took a baseline blood test today and then I go again on Wed and if the levels go higher, I’m still pregnant.  If they go lower or stay the same then I am not.

Until then I’m on “pelvic rest” their term, not mine.  So the nurse was telling me that I should not stick foreign objects, penises, fingers, or vegetables up my hoo hoo (my term) until they give me the okay.  And yes, she did say vegetables, which of course had me raising some eye brows and saying, “Did you just say….”.  I’m sorry, but would make you think that a cucumber, carrot, or similar vegetable would be okay when even fingers are a no no.  And you KNOW some dumbass did this otherwise why else would they actually have to SAY that!  That was the highlight of this whole process by the way.

So keep posted cause it seems that the waiting game has just begun….

A buddy to suffer with

Beware my friends.  I have decided that I need a fellow “suffer buddy” so I am secretly (now publicly) wishing that one of my friends gets pregnant.  Soon.  A friend of mine had her first baby about 4 years ago and has been talking about #2 for a little while (She has to undergo fertility treatments) but has yet to really get going on it.  I just sent her an email this afternoon telling her that her schedule really isn’t working for me and she needed to start breeding soon as I needed a buddy to suffer with.  For some reason she thought this was hysterically funny, but honestly people, she’s my best bet.

Now I may have said it as a joke, but I’m serious. There are practical reasons on my part for this.

One, ‘S’ can’t even say the word pregnant.  In fact he will go so far out of the way of saying the word that when he called his mother to tell her that we were going to have a baby, he told her the same way I told mine, which was, “Are you ready to be a grandparent?”  To which his mother replied, yes, and then completely changed the topic to something else.  She apparently thought that we were either getting another cat, or something else.  I’m really not sure, but when she talked with his sister later that day she was shocked to find out that a baby was on the way.  He told his best friend by sending him a text message telling him that he’s going to be losing the extra desk in our office that our friend sets his laptop on, to a crib.  The word is beyond taboo for him.  I’m curious if he can go the whole 9 months without saying it once.

The second reason is that it provides a ready made playmate for their kid and mine.  I don’t have to go out and make friends with other people when our pregnancies are really the only thing to start out with that we have in common.  I hate seeking out new friends if it doesn’t just happen naturally.  Especially since I have a special kind of sarcastic humor that many don’t appreciate.  And I’m sorry but pregnancy is a subject that is equal opportunity in my eyes to make fun of.  But for some reason it’s a “sensitive” topic.  Screw that.  I’ll make fun of myself, the subject, and the baby to my heart’s content.  I have no desire to deal with shocked and offended fellow pregos who are as emotionally unstable as me.  I realize I’m an acquired taste.

The third and most important, is I want someone else who I can go and bitch to who is going through the exact same thing and won’t get tired after 30 seconds of talking about whatever ache, pain, or grumpiness I feel.  A fellow buddy to suffer with.  Cause ‘S’ is going to reach burn on on this quickly.  He needs to deal with all issues in small doses, very small doses.  I need a fellow prego for this.

So if you happen so see a fertility doll similar to the one above hanging out in your purse, car, or home after I’ve visited, you’ve been targeted my friend!

And baby makes three

Some of your got a personal phone call, for others we shall use the blog to test out how often you all visit the site.  

‘S’ and I found out earlier this week that we are pregnant.

Now I know I always said that I would never have kids, and when we first got married and for several years now we have stuck to this idea.  We do not believe in accidents people, only carelessness.  We ALL know how this state comes to be and we ALL know how to prevent it.  So in 7+ years of marriage we’ve never had even one month when we had to wonder if I was or wasn’t.  Last year ‘S’ turned 30 and decided that before he got much older we needed to evaluate if we really did or didn’t want kids.  We took a fair amount of time to make this decision as it’s not a light one by any means.  We decided that yes, we would like to be parents and that we had become responsible enough to offer a stable, loving household to a little person.  We did however put a time frame on how long we would be “trying” to get pregnant.  2 years.  Just 24 months for this to happen.  ‘S’ didn’t want to be older than 50 when the kid would be graduating from high school.  Oh, and we decided we only want one.  The little buggers are just so expensive.

Well as I broke my leg in March, the horizontal mambo was the last thing on my mind.  And to be honest, as I’ve still been rehabbing, we haven’t been trying very hard, but neither have we been preventing.  So I was a little surprised when I took a test prior to having oral surgery to remove a cyst to see a + sign on the test.  Stan wanted to see the box to make sure I was reading it right.   While I think we both thought were were mentally prepared, we have found that the idea in concept is much different than reality.  To put it bluntly, we are excited, but also nervous and scared.  ‘S’ told me that it’s still not real to him yet.

Well after 2 tests, and a overwhelming desire to pee on every pregnancy testing stick that could be found in the Central Pennsylvania area to help it sink in, I hightailed it over to my OBGYN to get it confirmed.  After going up two flights of stairs and then having to go back down and then up again to get my insurance card, I was ready to get this over with.  I thought I would just be using another test stick but nope, they wanted me to fill a cup full and then give it to the nurse.  Now the bathroom that I was to use was in the waiting room and the room was packed.  So she handed me a cup with a snap top and directed me to the bathroom.  I went and filled the cup and then as I was walking back, my bad leg, which was a little shaky after all those stairs, caught a little on the carpet.  All I could see mentally was this full cup of pee flipping through the air in slow motion and the cap coming off to shower the poor people in the waiting room.

Luckily this didn’t actually happen.  I managed to adjust my grip on the cup in time, but was so afraid of this actually coming true that I walked the rest of the way through the waiting room holding onto it with both hands.  Of course the nurse looked at me a little funny as I did the hand off.  5 min later, I was called up and they confirmed that I was in fact pregnant.  It’s a little nerve racking to hear it from someone else, cause a small part of you is still thinking that the home test could have been wrong.

A friend of mine recommended that I think about not saying anything for at least 3 months when I’m out of the first trimester as the chance of miscarriages is at it’s highest then.  I think my aunt told me it’s about 25% of all pregnancies end this way.  However, we decided not to wait.  I’m not saying that I wouldn’t be sad if I miscarried but I’m one of those people that realizes that there was a reason why my body miscarried and that it wasn’t a viable fetus in the first place.  Not my fault.  So, on the off chance that it happens — I’ll let you all know, but please don’t feel the need to call, write, or email me your sympathy.  You can feel bad for us from afar.  Your desire to share it will only make it worse.  Like salt in the wound.

But assuming that all is going well in the meantime, I shall be sharing with you all the adventures of pregnancy.  Don’t be expecting all wonderful, warm, loving posts.  I’m going to be losing control over my body for the next 8 months, and it ain’t gonna be pretty.  I already had one of my coworkers get me upset today about a discussion of our new benefits and I found myself sitting at my desk unable to stop crying for 20 minutes, all the while having a mental conversation with myself to get it together.  I finally got up and went home to ‘S’ who had the day off, just to bawl on his shoulder and get a hug before I could come back to work and act like an adult again.  I can’t even explain to you all the different ways that this is so out of character for me.  Damn hormones.

On the upside, I’ve not been sick at all.  Go figure.  My one chance of losing some wight before I pack it on even more later in the pregnancy and I have no problem keeping food down.  But then again I have no desire to drag myself into work and be happy on the phone after making an offering to the porcelain God either, so lets all keep our fingers crossed that this will continue.

I’m off to the store now to go pick up some acne cream since apparently one of the joys of pregnancy is going through puberty all over again…..