It's been an interesting week (or more) as we attempt to get life ready for Bebe and for Ivan's next career stop. Who'd have thought the combination of the two would create such chaos? Well, most anyone, I suppose.
I exaggerate a bit. It's been mostly good, and I blame that entirely on me having the freedom to structure my day as best fits my energy level and brain fog. We've been working on moving stuff around in the house to make life a bit easier to live and encourage ourselves to do more... to work on crafty projects, to work out, to be in places of our house that we hardly use right now and will enjoy when they are organized and fresh. In the meantime, I have been throwing away a crapton of things that have no place in our lives. I never knew what a hoarder I was. I feel the need to not be, anymore. I want clean, uncluttered, easy to reach and everything having a place of its own.
We're not there, yet, but it feels so much closer than ever. I realize now just how deeply our rut has been since we moved here. I'm so glad we're breaking out of it now.
The good - all of our house stuff that's going on... good health for the most part for both of us... paying off our septic tank bill and Christmas trip... and that we went to a baby shower Saturday last for a friend from my CBS days. She's doing so well and had so many of our classmates and colleagues that for me it was both a reunion and intensely reaffirming - I once did a pretty important and very cool job and did it well, and met good people doing it. I'd forgotten that in the past almost two years.
Ivan was the consummate guest; attentive to me when appropriate, wandering off with the rest of the guys to watch football, and being a good sport about playing the "guy games" when asked. Given his superb palate and sense of smell, it was no wonder that he won the "guess the baby food" contest - correction, he tied it; this led to a "run-off" so to speak. As Sarah (the hostess) explained the rules of the runoff, she started with, "Each contestant will choose one jar of baby food to finish, and--" by the time she got to "and," my clever husband had sidled smoothly over to the table where the jars resided, identified the applesauce, and was in position to grab it and go. Grab and go he did, and won a neat little pocket tool.
We had a great time. Then I had my glucose test and nurse check on Tuesday. The rest of the good is that I am gaining on track (even with Marymom's awesome Christmas cooking) - 18 pounds over 28 weeks, which the nurse said is wonderful given my age and inability to be as active as I was pre-pregnancy - and that the moment she touched the Doppler to my stomach, she picked up an incredibly strong, steady heartbeat. I swear, she could have just held the thing above my abdomen and picked up on it... that's how strong and loud it was. Very reassuring.
The bad - I guess it's really not so bad. I failed my one-hour glucose test, which means I need to take the three-hour. Right now all this means is that I'm a candidate for gestational diabetes, which isn't good, but isn't nearly as bad as all sorts of other fun things that could happen during pregnancy, which have not. I may not even have GD; my body has always processed sugar bizarrely, and I haven't had GD yet. But I am 40 on Monday, I was overweight to start, and I may just be pushing my body too hard, and this is how it pushes back. We'll find out on Wednesday.
Which leads to the ugly - as in, my body's most colorful way of pushing back. I am now on a constant diet of Pepcid AC and Gaviscon, thanks to my clinic's advice. I have acid reflux to end all acid reflux. Strangely enough, it's not directed by what I eat. I eat bland mashed potatoes, and have acid reflux. I drink a glass of water, and have acid reflux. I lie on my back... and you get the picture.
It's been explained to me that the thingy at the top of my stomach leading to my esophagus (in technical talk, the hiatus) has probably relaxed itself a great deal, much like my pelvic ligaments have. In the case of the pelvic ligaments, when arising from a sitting position, I walk like a woman who has been cruelly used. In the case of the hiatus, it means that whenever I bend over, lie down, or breathe, whatever is jostling about at the top of my stomach wants to make its way up through the hiatus and into my esophagus. This causes heartburn, or as in the case of the very ugly on Thursday... immediate and prolonged retching.
But there's more! Disclaimer - it does get even more ugly...
There is nothing uglier than a bathroom sink full of the evidence... unless it's a bathroom sink that chose THAT VERY INSTANT to display the aftereffects of what Ivan later (read, 2 AM) described as a hair clog (even though I've had my hair cut and have not been washing it in the sink anyway! How unfair is that???). A hair clog that had been thoroughly... saturated. With the excruciatingly slow-draining contents of the sink... which were once the contents of my stomach.
A husband who will tackle the unclogging of a sink after his wife has anointed it with the contents of her lunch is a husband to be cherished, adored, and appreciated.
And I do.
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