Tag Archives: career

Bump Watch: 33 and 34 (billion) Weeks

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I’m never again going to not be pregnant. I have been pregnant forever, and it’s never going to end. This is the point at which I’ve decided to accept that fact.

So here’s what 33 weeks looked like, since I pretty much skipped that. And by pretty much, I mean I completely and totally skipped it.

imagejpeg_2-35And here’s 34 weeks:

imagejpeg_2-36I’m essentially giving you a tour of my parents’ house from belly level. I know, I’m such a gracious, considerate hostess.

So I actually do have a super exciting pregnancy near-emergency story.

Tuesday, on my VERY LAST DAY OF CLINICALS, I woke up at about 5 am, completely out of breath. I propped myself up on an extra pillow and focused on my breathing, and I fell back asleep until my alarm went off at 5:50. I grabbed breakfast on my way to clinical (don’t tell Andy I’m spending money on fast food, he hates that), and went to our little beginning of the day conference thing in the employee break room.

So I felt like crap and was trying to catch my breath through the whole thirty-minute meeting, and when we were standing up to go on the floor, I got tunnel vision and couldn’t catch my breath. A fellow student took my pulse, which was just over 100 (high), and then we went upstairs so they could take my blood pressure.

“Normal” blood pressure is 120/80, but mine runs around 96/56 (yes, that specific). With the lightheadedness and the tunnel vision, and the fact that I was seeing spots (did I mention that part? I don’t remember. But I was seeing spots for sure), I thought that, if anything, my blood pressure had dropped.

Nope. 138/83. That’s a big problem, and high blood pressure out of nowhere in pregnancy can mean preeclampsia. Not. Good.

So I laid down on the couch in the employee lounge, and made some phone calls, and eventually it was determined I needed to go home, and I needed to go see my midwife, like, RIGHT NOW. Problem was, I couldn’t drive. So another student took me home, then a friend drove me to the midwife.

I was nauseous, my head was pounding, my vision was completely jacked up, I couldn’t catch my breath, my heart was racing (my pulse got up to 118 beats per minute), and on top of it all, I was almost having a panic attack because I thought there was a chance they were going to have to deliver Lucas, like, immediately because somehow I suddenly had preeclampsia. I wasn’t ready for that.

Luckily, though, given my symptoms and the lack of protein in my urine (TMI, sorry), it was determined that it WASN’T preeclampsia, and probably just idiopathic pregnancy-induced hypertension.

I feel all smart and fancy saying that.

I obsessively took my blood pressure the rest of the day on Tuesday, then most of the day yesterday, and it’s been lower than it was Tuesday morning, but still high for me, and I’m still having a hard time catching my breath, and still seeing spots. So that’s awesome. But Lucas is doing well, and using my organs as punching bags, so I can’t complain too much.

In other news, I’m less than a week from done with the semester, and for real, HALLELUJAH on that one. Three days of finals next week, and that’s it. I’m so ready for the break.

Anyway, that’s all my news for now. Enjoy.

 

 

Bump Watch: 32 Weeks (and two days)

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I seriously have less than two months of this pregnancy left.

And it’s like Sweatpants R Me up in here.

Supposedly Lucas weighs just under four pounds at this point, which seems incredibly unfair, considering I have gained…A LOT MORE than that.

I kid, I kid. Almost four pounds, and almost seventeen inches long. He’s five weeks past what they consider the age of vitality, meaning that at 27 weeks, if you go into the hospital with any kind of complication, the ready-for-anything ER nurses will freak out just a little, practically toss your enormous backside in a wheelchair, and run – literally run - you upstairs to labor and delivery. I learned that at 28 weeks, when I had strange, tight pain in my lower abdomen and lower back pain that I never had with Logan. Everything was fine; I was just having some unfamiliar round ligament pain, and the relaxin was just starting to kick in, meaning ev. er. y. thing. in my lower back and pelvis is suddenly seemingly free-floating, and apparently that’s why my sacrum literally turns within my pelvic girdle and pinches my sciatic nerves on both sides like crazy.

Pregnancy is super fun.

Also, fun little nuance I’ve noticed: most nursing students who want to do flight nursing, trauma/emergency room nursing, etc, are absolutely freaked out at the thought of delivering a baby. I have had more than one aspiring ER nurse explain to me how much they’d love to be elbow-deep in a stabbing victim or be the one to place a chest tube (though that’s not until one becomes a DNP) or be the one to manually massage a patient’s heart while in surgery…but mention to them that you want to work in labor and delivery or mother-baby, and they’ll wrinkle up their nose like you just pooped in the corner of the room.

Go figure.

I’ve been off school and at my own home, with my own family, (I know, it’s a miracle) since last Saturday, and tomorrow I have to get back to that damn proverbial grind. I cried a little tonight, after we went and saw Red Dawn (don’t believe Rotten Tomatoes, it TOTALLY deserved more than 11%), and I have a feeling I’ll have a full-blown meltdown at some point tomorrow before I actually leave my house to spend the week at my family’s house.

This week and next week, I have my last four days of clinicals, and regular classes the rest of the week. The week after that, we have some totally weird, jacked up schedule for finals and evaluations and all other sorts of boring but necessary stuff. By the end of this semester, I will be 35 weeks pregnant. THIRTY. FIVE. WEEKS. PREGNANT.

I have these weird dreams where I’m suddenly in the hospital and for some reason, they want to take Lucas out of me early. There’s no emergency, no real sense of urgency, but they just…want to take him out. And I always refuse, and wake up before anything is concluded, but still…freaking weird dreams, yo. Last night, I had another dream where they checked me and I was already dilated to 5.5 centimeters. I mean, I definitely don’t want to go eight days overdue with Lucas, like I did with Logan, but 32 weeks is definitely too early. I’d prefer to go into labor on my own this time, maybe around 39 weeks, 3 days. Yes, I actually think about this stuff. At the very least, he better stay in there until at least 37 weeks.

Anyway, I’m sorry I’ve been kind of just using my blog lately as a totally disjointed, inconsistent, infrequent, stream-of-consciousness diary thing, but in three short weeks, I should be able to breathe a little easier, and think a little clearer, and maybe be interesting or even funny again. That would just be awesome.

In the meantime, this is pretty much all my brain can manage to spit out.

Now it’s time for some pumpkin pie, y’all. Peace.

Bump Watch: 31 Weeks

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I have nothing clever for this. I just keep sticking out more, and my love handles keep getting thicker.

I know the old wives’ tales aren’t necessarily to be believed, but some of them have been true with both of my pregnancies. I want salt. Always. All the time. I’m carrying like that - low, very round, straight out.

OH MY GOSH BEFORE I FORGET.

We have a name. Nine weeks to go and we finally have a name.

Ready for it?

Drumroll please…

Lucas Cade.

OMG I know, right?!

Also, I am currently the weight at which I delivered Logan. Nine weeks before my due date. So, though I know it’s totally normal, expected, healthy (I haven’t yet hit a 25-pound gain, so there’s still some jiggle room in the next two months. See what I did there? I made a funny.), etc, with your second child to gain more…I’m not exactly thrilled to be seeing the numbers on the midwife’s scale that I am. I mean, come on, I looked like this at 5 weeks pregnant:

Yes, I love my child, and nourishing him, and growing him within my being is miraculous, and most of the time I even love being pregnant. But vanity wins sometimes, and I’ll look at my hips and my thighs and my upper arms, and I just think, Wow…I can’t wait to have this baby and get back in shape.

Obviously it’s not helping that I have to be on my butt in class ten hours a week, and I have less energy and time to actually move around and stay maybe a little in shape with this pregnancy. Not to mention, I’m three years older, and as a nursing school friend told me, “Your body’s been down this road before.” Meaning the hormones tell my body, “DUDE STOCK UP ON THE CALORIES, STORE THEM EVERYWHERE, BUT MOSTLY THE ASS AND THIGHS, SHE’LL TOTALLY LOVE THAT.” and seriously OMG DID I JUST FIND A STRETCH MARK OVER MY BELLY BUTTON?! For real, body?!

And then I end up feeling like a whale (while yes, I know, my weight and weight gain are absolutely healthy and whatnot, but part of my brain won’t believe that), and I try desperately not to spiral into self-loathing that ends with me sitting on my couch, crying, surrounded by Fun Dip wrappers, while I watch Sesame Street or Caillou, because that’s the channel the TV was on, and I don’t have the energy to get up and find the remote to change it.

On the home front, I think we’re moving soon, which will be a real experience at about 36 weeks pregnant. Though Andy has already committed to doing all the heavy lifting, and basically, to move everything but my clothes. You know, because he’s manly like that. It’s hot and I feel all cared for, and other mushy stuff.

Also, after tomorrow, I have a full week off school for Thanksgiving, which, THANK GOODNESS for that, because it’s going to save my sanity. Then two weeks of clinicals and classes, then one week of final exams.

After that, I can breathe for a while. And become a mom again. The mom of two boys. Two boys. It’s crazy, and I’m actually getting used to it. I think maybe I can do this.

Of course, that’s today’s feeling.

 

 

Bump Watch: 30 Weeks

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I’ll paint a little portrait for you here, with words and pictures. But mostly with pictures, because my brain is too tired for words.

This is me at 29 weeks, 4 days. I managed to not realize I missed my last week-change…a bit late.

So the shirt I’m wearing in this picture is the same shirt I wore at 39 weeks, 4 days, when I was pregnant with Logan. I know that because I have pictures. It was Valentine’s Day 2010 – the day Andy proposed. See?

I’m wearing non-maternity jeans. They fit me fine, up until the day I delivered (12 days after this). If I were to try to wear them now, I COULD, but I’d  be yanking them up and adjusting them all day long, and I’d have muffin top from here to next week. In short, it would make me cry and hate myself.

Let’s get a wider angle of this time around. Again, exactly ten weeks earlier than I was in the photo of me and Andy.

The shirt fits me about the same as it did in the Valentine’s day picture. So that was awesome for my self-esteem. I mean, I was well aware from about ten weeks on that this pregnancy was getting me thicker faster than my pregnancy with Logan. Of course, that’s to be expected. This is my second pregnancy, I started out in better shape with Logan (yet, strangely, at a lower weight with this one), and I may only be twenty-two, but I was still a teenager when I was pregnant the first time. There’s a lot of very big differences that make my figure (or lack thereof) this time around not only the exact opposite of a surprise, but actually a healthy thing.

Though I won’t lie, I already have my plan to drop the weight and get into even better shape after I have this baby than I was in when I got pregnant with Logan. And I was in phenomenal shape when I got pregnant with him.

It’s not even that I want to be a certain weight or size; I just want to feel strong and healthy and great about myself. If that means I end up weighing 120 lbs and a size 5 or 7, great. If that means I end up at 105 lbs and a size 1…I’m not going to lie, I’d be a little less thrilled about that outcome, but whatever. I just want to feel healthy, inside and out. Because I don’t right now.

ANYWHO, now, here’s me TONIGHT, at 30 weeks exactly. I’ve felt like I haven’t really grown from week 25 to week 29, but now it’s definitely picking up again. Compare this photo to week 28.

Yup. In the Stewie sweats again.

I’ve stopped having weird dreams (hallmarks of my pregnancies), but I think that’s because I can’t sleep for more than 90 minutes at a time without needing to get up and pee. It’s super lame, and I’m guessing it’s the reason that I can sleep for 10 hours in a night and still be groggy all day the next day.

Pregnancy, thou art a heartless, sleep-stealing shrew.

I’m three-quarters of the way done, and in the last week or so, my husband has started talking about…wait for it…baby number three.

You read that correctly. Number two hasn’t even had the chance to tear me open from V to A and completely disfigure my lady lumps for the time I plan to nurse, and my husband has already voiced very real desire to have A THIRD CHILD.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I agree. I want to end up with three children, and I’d be thrilled to have a girl next time, if that’s what God has in store for us, but really…number two is still in my uterus.

As far as the rest of my life goes, it’s just school, school, and more school. Clinicals 16 hours a week, lab 6 hours a week, and class 4 hours a week. About 4 hours of driving to and from class, which does not include the two-plus hours I spend commuting from the city I live in to the one I go to school in. I’m kind of tired.

I have one week of class, then a week off for Thanksgiving. Then I go back for three more weeks, and then I’m done. As it stands now, I’m due four days before spring semester begins, so my plan is to defer until August 2013, meaning I’ll graduate in December 2014. I’d like to try and do concurrent ASN/BSN courses at the university my school works with, because then I’d have my bachelor’s of nursing within about three semesters of having my associate’s.

I’m totally ready to just be a nurse. I gave a TB skin test the other day, which was basically the most awesome thing I’ve ever done. If you don’t know what that is, suffice it to say I got to stick a needle in someone, and they didn’t even die. I rocked it, guys. They should just make me an honorary doctor or something.

That’s about the end of the thoughts I have for the night.

The end.