blog about mommyhood

I've found that this blog doesn't quite fit my needs anymore, so I'll be "splitting" the topics: keeping this one about grad student woes but writing about my pregnancy, the birth, and my journey into motherhood at a new blog, becoming mommy. Hope you'll read that one and enjoy it!

racking up the nerves

I'm officially 33 weeks now (I'll try to post pics later this weekend) and am starting to rack up a major case of nerves about giving birth and being a mom--and being ready for it all.

I've been spending my week cracking the books again, trying to get back into the habit of studying while I still have time to do so. Well, I shouldn't imply that that's all I've been doing. I've been reading and writing about one article per day, which adds up to about two to three hours of studying a day. Soon, I've got to add in working on my reading list and comprehensive exam questions, so that'll take more time (and more concentration). Besides that, I've been spending too much time on Facebook (hey, it passes the time), sorting through and laundering baby gifts, writing thank-you cards, and beginning to really, really anticipate being a mom in seven short weeks (give or take). And getting really, really nervous about the entire thing.

What am I nervous about? One, being ready. Al's been able to work overtime this week, which is good for our finances but not so good for the hardwood floor that's not being put in the baby's room. Tomorrow's out since we have a birthing class all day, but Shemp may be able to come over and help him get started on the floor Sunday (that is, if it's okay with Laura and she's not working). Then it's back to work for him Monday through Wednesday, possibly more if they offer him overtime again. But the longer it takes him to finish (or even start) the floor the more anxious I get. Our house is a mess since we have baby stuff all over the living room and dining room, and I can't put anything away until he gets that done. One thing I hate is having a messy house with things lying around everywhere, and it seems like our house is always that way--I don't remember a time when everything was put away. There's not room for it all since I moved my stuff in. Add one more person's stuff in the house and, well, you've got the picture.

Even more than that, I'm nervous about being prepared to go to the hospital. What do I pack in the diaper bag? What do I pack for myself? I've been looking around on the internet and realized I need to do some shopping for myself (great, more money Al will worry about spending), so when do I do that? Where? Do I have to do it by myself? I don't have a clue what I'm doing. I don't even know how long to pack for. How long will we be in the hospital? How many sets of clothes do I need for the kid? Blankets? Hats? I've only got two hats, one nice that goes with the outfit to bring him/her home in, and one for a six-month old. Won't the kid need a hat for while we're in the hospital? Can we use a cell phone to call everyone, or will we have to pay to use the hospital phone? Who will take care of our dog while we're there? Neither my sister nor my dad would commit to that since they both work long hours (10 and 12 hour shifts). So will Al just have to come home to be with the dog instead of having to be with me? Will I end up alone in the hospital? It's not like I can call my mom and ask her to come stay with me.

(This is always my thought process, by the way. It drives Al crazy because he says I just go from one thing to another. But they're all related and this is how I think. I really do have all of these questions, and not knowing the answers to them makes me start worrying. It doesn't help that the past two nights of trying to sleep have been miserable--the pain is back again in my hips/legs and the baby doesn't like it anymore when I try to sleep on my left side--it kicks and squirms and hurts me until I move again.)

I'm nervous about getting to the hospital (knowing Al, he'll be at a hockey game or drinking after hockey when I need to go in, or he won't be wearing/listening for his cell phone at work and will be impossible to reach. I might have to call Will or Rick and tell them to track down my husband for me!) and being at home alone with the baby after Al goes back to work. How long will Al take off work to be with us? Probably not long, because he'll be worried about money (he always is, no matter how well we're doing). And then I'll have to take care of the baby, the dog, the cat, the house, and the cooking all by myself--oh, yeah, and try to study while I'm at it. Will I be any good at it? I want so, so much to be a good mom. And I'm so, so afraid that I'll fail my child. I wish my mom was still around to give me advice and help me. She was a nanny for the past eight years (sans the time she spent in the hospital and in hospice) and everything about child-raising was fresh to her--it's not like it was twenty-some years since she'd taken care of an infant.

I'm crying now (sorry, can't help it) and although writing usually helps release some of my nerves/tension, it's just building up. Sorry for spilling this all on you. Thanks for reading this nerve-wracked mom-to-be's blog.

32 weeks

32 weeks. 8 weeks to go. The doctor's office called on Thursday and told me to schedule another ultrasound for a month from now since "the baby's so big already."

The baby shower was yesterday and was fun and wonderful. No games (yay!). Just a lot of people arriving late (but safely) because of the snow, food, and presents (more than we ever expected). I am so grateful for our generous friends and family!

My carpal tunnel eased up yesterday. I could still feel slight tingling, but it wasn't as painful. Could it be that the steroids are finally kicking in? Whatever the case, I took full advantage of the fact and worked until 1 am on various projects.

Last night, another dream: People kept asking me how I am going to give birth, as they do in real life. "I'm going to try to do it naturally," I replied.

Laura F. piped up. "Do a water birth," she urged. "Trust me, I've done it all three ways--naturally, c-section, and water birth, and water's the best." I was stunned, not even knowing that was an option in a hospital like the one to which I'll be going. Confused and not knowing what to do, I turned to ask my mom her advice. It hit me suddenly that I couldn't ask her that, couldn't ask her anything anymore; she's dead now. I started crying in frustration and grief.

In the next scene, I was in the hospital being helped into a tub of warm, warm bath water that had the perfect seat and the perfect support for my aching body. I felt more comfortable than I had in months. The two nurses began praying over me, asking God to grant me a safe delivery. I thought for a moment that the doctor was about to join in, but he kept walking around the room writing on his clipboard. I didn't get to give birth, though; instead, I woke up.

31 weeks

Thirty-one weeks pregnant, nine weeks to go.

This week's ultrasound said baby is about 4 pounds, 11 ounces.

My carpel tunnel was diagnosed as severe in the left wrist with nerve and muscle damage, moderate to severe in the right. I got steroid shots in both wrists and am hoping they will provide some relief within the next twenty-four hours.

Even if the shots don't help, it doesn't matter. When the baby's here, it will all be worth it.

...it was something in the soda

I've heard before that pregnant women sometimes tend to have bizarre dreams, but last night was beyond bizarre. One strange dream after another, followed by a rude awakening (Al's alarm) and a rude stay-awakening (my dog, who wouldn't settle down again after hearing Al's alarm). And so I'm up, with less sleep than I intended to get. But I'm told that's the life of a mother, so...

My dreams started off with dreams of my baby. My newborn looked quite familiar, seeing as how he was half-Chinese and twenty-some pounds (of course, this might have something to do with me seeing Dennis' and Cathy's son Michael, who was born last May, last night). For some reason, I had to leave him at my parents' church with my mother. When I came back, they (whomever "they" are) had hooked my son up to my mother with an IV so that he was being fed by her blood. I felt horrible bringing it up, but I had to ask if my son could get the cancer my mom had by being fed her blood. Mom hadn't thought of it and was a bit alarmed, one man (possibly Buster from Arrested Development, or a character from a Bones episode I watched recently) said there was "absolutely nothing to worry about" since that was not the way cancer was transmitted, and someone else (I don't even think this person appeared in the dream) said it was a huge concern and got the IV line switched from my mother to me immediately.

That dream led to another bizarre dream. I pulled my parents' old white station wagon into my friend's parents' garage. I had to do this several times, and it was scary because as soon as you pulled into the garage it (the garage) shot up into the air about three stories like it was some giant elevator. The garage door remained open when it did this, and the garage tilted about forty-five degrees so that the open garage door was facing down. Only when you had parked and gotten out of the car did the garage begin to lower. The last time I parked, I did it perfectly, pulling in frontwards and doing a fancy brake/turning thing like they do in movie car chases so I ended up facing the open garage door. (This would have been impossible since it was a two-car garage with another car already in it, but it was a dream.) I pulled on the emergency brake, opened the car door and the garage lowered. But a beautiful, big, pink flowering plant on a plant stand appeared in front of my car and I knew I had to put it somewhere in their already-full backyard patio/garden. I picked it up and carried it out of the garage and a chipmunk ran out of it up onto my shoulder. I was worried about placing the plant somewhere where it would both look good and not be knocked over by the wind, so although the chipmunk hidden somewhere in my hair on my shoulder was freaking me out (they are rodents, after all), I couldn't do anything about it. I finally set the plant down in the perfect spot and the chipmunk ran off of my shoulder seeming all grateful. But as I headed back toward the garage, a baby chipmunk (to my mind; it was actually a tiny whitish, pinkish mouse) wouldn't leave me alone. I decided that I would have to reunite it with the other chipmunk to get it to stop bothering me. As I delivered it to its mother(?)/sibling(?), several guinea pigs appeared at my feet and started chasing me. They were everywhere--under my feet, surrounding me, and no matter where I went, they wouldn't leave me alone. They had seen what I had done for the chipmunks and wanted something, but were just scaring me. I woke up at that point.

The last dream I remember was not quite as bizarre as the second, but still strange enough. It was about breastfeeding, and I was upset because I needed to breastfeed Mya (my dog) and couldn't get to it for some reason. So Al offered to try. Dennis was there as Al's coach. Al managed to produce milk but by that point had given up on actually feeding Mya with it--he produced it by squeezing his own nipple with his hand (yes, Dennis was still coaching). I was upset because he had given up on the puppy so quickly and took her with me to try it again myself, but kept getting both interrupted (by what, I no longer remember) and rejected (by Mya--she wanted Al, I think). It didn't seem strange to me at all in the dream that I was trying to breastfeed a puppy; she was my baby (at least she wasn't half-Chinese this time).

So, here I am after approximately six hours of sleep, at least three strange dreams, and about two hours of laying awake and tossing and turning in bed (partially due to discomfort, partially due to Mya's whining and ripping apart of her bed) awake and blogging. But I'm hoping my day will be a partially productive day like the others have been so far this year with a little nap snuck in on the side. Happy Sunday, Happy New Year, and wishes for normal dreams to you all.

christmas 2008

's wonderful! 's marvelous! That's how my Christmas was, and I hope yours was the same. What was wonderful about my Christmas? It was wonderfully traditional, and although we missed mom, we still managed to enjoy the season. The entire time, though, I couldn't help but wonder how different it will be next year with a nine-month old crawling around (and a hopefully well-trained, one-year-old rottweiler and a fifteen-year-old cat).

Our Christmas season started off with the annual Christmas party hosted by Jen and Bob, followed by Christmas Eve appetizers and dinner (this year at Ryan and Rachel's), opening presents with Al Christmas morning, Christmas dinner with Al's family at his brother's house, and ended with Holiday Nights at Greenfield Village last night (I've only done this once before, so technically it's not "traditional"). In between all of those were extra visits with Al's brother, sister-in-law, and nephew in from New York and an impromptu "baby shower lunch" thrown by my female in-laws since Kim won't be able to make it for the real thing. Oh, and a really bad cold and body temperatures ranging from 96.3 to 96.8 that made me feel a little weak and freaked, but didn't interfere too much with the festivities.

The festivities were/are so much, in fact, that even though I've been wanting to go to the movies since October, we still haven't had the time to go. So in the next three days that Al still has off, I'm hoping we can sneak it in. It will have to come sometime in between my physical therapy, the annual New Year's party at Del and Nicole's, and a football gathering at Log and Jen's on Thursday (which honestly I'm not too thrilled about, just because I'm not a football fan and we'll just have finished "partying" twelve hours before the gathering...maybe I'll just send Al and take another nap, which I've been doing frequently these days). Right now, I'm supposed to be straightening things up around the house and Al is working on emptying the baby's room, formerly his computer/television/guitar/poster room, in preparation for the painting I'll start late this week or early next week. And that's all of our news. Deliciously mundane, and although it's the holidays, "normal." After this week, my actual "normal" reality will start, and I can't wait. It'll change soon (sometime on, before, or after March 12), but it'll just be a new kind of normal. And the thought of that makes me happy.

hold the calls

I admit it. I used to make them. I used to take them. But that was when I was younger, single, non-pregnant, and tended to go out and stay out late. Now I just hate them. What am I writing about? Late night phone calls.

In my book, there are only four acceptable reasons for a late night phone call (and I'm talking any time after 9 p.m.) from a non-relative:

1. It's an emergency. Someone is dying, has died, or possibly could die (as in, I'm so drunk I can't drive and I'm doing the smart thing hoping for a ride) and you need to talk to me. These types of calls should be rarer than Christmas.
   
2. I'm expecting you to call and we've arranged it ahead of time, or I'm expecting you to call since it's incredibly good news. If you had your baby in the middle of the night and know I'd be upset if you didn't call me, then please, pick up the phone!
   
3. You're expecting me to come out and I haven't arrived yet. This would actually apply to my husband more than me since he plays late night hockey games and I tend to stay in. While acceptable, these calls tend to annoy me if they turn into five or six phone calls that eat away at the very limited time I spend with my husband, so keeping it down to one call is advised.
   
4. It's a work emergency. This, too, would apply to my husband rather than me. He works at a plant and sometimes the night guys just need to know something that went on during the day or need advice on a job. This type of call is rare, so understandable.

So to my husband's almost forty-year-old friend who just doesn't get it (and doesn't read this blog, so it won't do a bit of good), get a clue: calling at 10:30 at night and having to have, "Were you sleeping?" be the first words out of your mouth is none other than rude, rude, rude. Al won't tell him that, of course. One of these days I'll just have to answer one of his late night calls and tell him that Al can't speak to him because it's a household rule that we don't take phone calls after 9:00. It wouldn't be so bad if it was a once a year thing, if he lived in a different time zone, etc. But this Peter Pan hasn't quite grown up yet and makes late night calls more often than I'd like. It especially bothers me when Al's worked a twelve-hour day and I've seen him for all of an hour before he gets a call, because Al's too polite to cut off the conversation and lets it go on for twenty to thirty minutes. Argh...

Now that my rant is over, thanks for letting me vent if you've stuck with me. I hate to complain online; Al thinks I complain too much as it is. Of course, half of what he thinks are complaints are not "complaints" in my mind (ah, the joys of miscommunication), but this definitely was one. Off to cooking dinner...