Know What's So Great About Frizzy Hair?

Yeah, me neither.


Anyway, here's another mixed bag of my thoughts.  Fair warning, I'm a bit whiny tonight.


My dad and Margaret's neighbor may have to sell their home because the husband's been laid off and the wife doesn't work (and no, she's not a stay at home mom... I said she doesn't work).  The house is not fabulous, but it's in a decent neighborhood.  They're selling it for about $20 grand more than we paid for this place.  It would have been within our budget.  Margaret said, "But it's small.  It's the smallest one they made."


Yeah, but compared to this place, everything is small.  And I would have been all for a smaller house with a small commute.  And while there are innumberable downsides to living next door to my dad, can you imagine days like today?  I stayed home because Tom spread his yucky germs.  So he had to drop Madelyn off on his way to work... at 5:20 this morning... after a nearly hour-long drive.  She and I could have slept in and then I could have just called Margaret and met her on the other side of the lawn.  *sigh*


And let's just talk about baby logistics for a second.  My plan is to give birth this time at the same place where I had Madelyn.  That's about 50 miles from here.  It's worth the hassle we may end up having because of the house we ended up choosing (which I do like most of the time), but Margaret's already making plans for me to stay with them as it gets closer for the baby to come.  In seven months.


We will have a back up plan*, but the best hospital up here won't do a tubal ligation right after birth.  I'd like to combine the pain and discomfort at once, if you don't mind.  Plus, the other hospital is phenomenal.  Madelyn spent four days in the NICU there** and we really trust them.


On the topic of being sick, I am.  I have the coughing-est, no-face-covering-est husband in the west.  I swear! 


Dude, just because you closed your mouth hole doesn't mean things can't come out the nose holes.  You're still breathing, right?  Argh!


*Tomorrow night Corey has a banquet for band.  We had to provide early childhood photos.  Photos, especially those in albums, will be one of the last things unpacked around here.  I see it happening in a year or two when we finally get to installing a built-in bookshelf/cabinet combo downstairs and a bookshelf/window seat upstairs.  To minimize lifting any of the 15 heavy boxes of albums (thank you Grandma and Grandpa!), I opted for looking through Corey's box.  It has all of the school assignments and art projects that A) show his personality and B) lasted long enough for me to remember to put them in the box.  It also holds some of his treasures.  As I was sifting through I came across a giant Mother's Day card that listed about seven things that made me a great mom.  The first one?  "She always has a Plan B."  Mm-hmm.  I believe he was four or five when that lesson was clearly instilled. 


***On a side-side note, I like this card better than the one where he said "My mommy's the greatest because she takes me to my best store, Target.  She loves the Red Hot Chili Peppers."


**Speaking of Mad and her story, I'm not even sure where I left off.  I'll have to wrap that up before too much longer.


Back on the topic of being pregnant, my willingness to be diligent about my diet just isn't the same this time as it was with Madelyn.  Oddly, and I may have mentioned this before, I associate this with the surprise nature of my pregnancy with Madelyn.  We had agreed not to have any kids together and then I was pregnant.  And we were both so freaking excited that I didn't want anything bad to happen more than the usual bit of concern and worrying.  So it was extremely easy for me (about 90% of the time) to give up coffee and chocolate and iced tea and whatever else I shouldn't have been having. 


Obviously I don't want anything bad to happen this time either, but I guess there's something this time that reminds me of being pregnant with Corey.  After several miscarriages, I just came to a point where I knew he was going to be okay.  I'm not exactly at that point with this one, but I'm a lot closer to relaxed than I am to constantly fretting.  So the call of coffee and brie and turkey sandwiches is greater this time than it was before.  I have to remind myself that I have decrepit eggs and that we are very lucky to be having a baby at all, and that I shouldn't be adding to the risk factors.


And following that stream of my (barely) consciousness*, I have the next part of the genetic risks testing next week.  It's the nuchal scan, where they measure the thickness of the neck.  I am a wee bit concerned that karma is gonna come after me.  Why?  One of the mommies in my group with Madelyn told me that she'd been pregnant once before with a son, but when they had the ultrasound he was deceased.  I'm not sure why I prodded her to tell the story.  It made us both uncomfortable and I don't think it helped her at all.  So, you see... not quite so relaxed just yet.  After Tuesday I will know more.


I can see I've spilled way more than intended here, but that's how it goes tonight.

Oh, Fine. Whatever!

When I was pregnant with Corey, I followed every piece of advice and guidance as if it were etched in stone. Not so much with Madelyn.

Did I go crazy with rule breaking? Nope. In fact, some of the guidance I didn't follow includes

• A little alchohol is okay (yeah, I don't think the wine industry had made that "finding" yet when I was pregnant with Corey)
• Two cups of coffee a day is a-okay (hmm... it used to be one, but now that there's Starbucks on every corner, two is a good number?... plus, I've always been sensitive to caffeine, so it has to be out while I'm pregnant)
• Chocolate is what every pregnant woman needs (not with the caffeine in it, thanks anyway... dammit!)
• "You can eat whatever you want to now" or "You're eating for two, right?" (yeah, but one of us is the size of a pinhead!... wish I could recall the comedian who said that not long before I got pregnant with Corey)

Generally speaking, unnecessary medical tests (oh, okay... except for the ultrasounds) were not allowed. The one thing I did agree to do was the gestational diabetes test. Why? Well, for one I weighed more when I got pregnant with Mad than I did at 21 when Corey was the resident sprout. For another thing, my dad is diabetic. No, we have not one drop of blood between us, but I knew it would comfort him to know I was following up on that possibility. And lastly, I have no idea what the hell I was thinking. I mean, sure I failed the test on the first try with Corey, but I'd also just eaten a Jolly Rancher right before going. I have no clue if that impacted it or not, but in my mind it did. All the same, it was probably better to know before my body was reacting to it if I had it. So I swore off anything remotely sweet for three weeks prior to the test (no, really) and off to the lab I went.
I arrived right after they opened, because this time I was told it was a fasting test. As the first person in, I got to get the blood test and drink the nasty stuff right away. Last time I'd gotten a choice of "soda" flavors and opted for orange because I was afraid the "7Up" flavor would be similar to the "lemon lime" flavored Alka-Seltzer I'd had to have once when I was sick and which induced vomiting. This time, no choice.
"Lemon lime for you!"
My initial plan was to just pound the stuff. There's a limited time to drink it, but it's way longer than it would normally take me to drink a glass of water.
I made it about 2/3 of the way through before I realized Plan A wasn't working. The lab tech eyed me warily, waiting to see if I would urp all over her. Not sure how I managed to keep it down... and finish the rest... but I did. (Thank god, too, because one of my friends didn't and she had to redo it... twice!)
When the drinking and initial bloodletting was done, I was made to go into the lobby and wait for an hour. I had to return at exactly five minutes to the hour or be forced to start over. No, I could not leave the office.
I brought a book, but I'm a people watcher by nature. Kind of awkward when you're watching people go into a bathroom and come out with a cup filled with their own pee, but whatever.
About 10 minutes before I had to go back for the second set of blood draws, a woman walked in with her grandchild. In an otherwise empty, spacious lobby, they chose seats right next to the pregnant woman. And they stood there, not two feet away, coughing and hacking all over one another and me.
I covered my mouth and nose, but it was too late.
Hours later the verdict was in: I had the flu.
I will admit to holding a grudge against these people... well, the adult anyway... even today. Why do people do that? Forget that I was pregnant for a sec. If you're sick, stay the hell away from other people! I don't care if you're in a medical lab because you're ill. I'm not! Bastards!
Because I am opposed to taking medications while pregnant (it's just one of many potential causes on my list of "what do you suppose happened to make Corey have so many problems?"), my goal was to deal with this naturally. So no matter how much I didn't want to, I made myself drink extra water. I used a humidifier to keep the cough away. I slept a lot. And I slathered myself in Vick's. Oh, and I probably went through two boxes of tissue (with lotion!) in three days. I flushed out my body every way I could. I did not spike a fever over 101, so I never went to the doctor.
Yes, I did tell him.
No, to his credit, he did not say, "I told you so."
Oh, and I didn't have gestational diabetes.