Wednesday, August 25, 2004
As it once was, so it shall be again…
That title has been sitting here in my editor for nearly a week, as I’ve wandered mentally far afield rather than actually writing up the things I was going to write up. There were so many of them, some left over from very early on...I just found the picture I took of the second positive pregnancy test, the one I took before I called Jay because I just couldn’t believe my eyes. I never wrote about feeling her move for the first time, either, about how I was sitting on the floor in the computer room on a Sunday at 16 weeks sorting through some papers and talking to Jay when I felt this odd swooshing feeling that was like nothing I’d ever felt before and how the smile on his face broke my heart into a million pieces because no heart anywhere can really handle that much love. Or how now, at 34 1/2 weeks, she’s running out of room and I have to concentrate to feel her sometimes and how she has on days and off days and sometimes the off days scare me a little, but that she always perks up when we go to bed at night and Jay lays his hand on my tummy and talks to her and my heart explodes all over again…
So much that needs to be written but probably won’t be. Growing her and trying to get the house ready are taking all of my energy right now. I’ve been doing the “nesting” thing and I do have to say that I’m quite pleased with the parts of the house I’ve actually managed to finish. Of course, I’ve also come to the conclusion that the nesting thing is crap, at least at this stage. What it really is is sheer, unadulterated panic. 
The title refers to the little joys of the third trimester that remind you so much of the first...the tiredness, the sleeping poorly, the nausea (though it is more clearly linked to incautious eating)...and the crying, my God, the crying. One more spontaneous breakdown and I might just put myself to bed for the duration.
There’s a decent chance that I’ll be going to bed for the duration anyway. Jay mentioned in his post this morning that we may meet this little one even earlier than we’d planned, and although the first round of testing isn’t back yet, I have a strong hunch that he is correct.
I go in for monitoring or an appointment of some kind 3-4 days a week. NSTs on Mondays and Thursdays, BPP on Tuesdays, plus weekly appointments with the midwife and the occasional other appointment to spice up the mix, with my PCP or the peri. Last Friday, PCP upped my bp meds. Monday, my pressure was the lowest it’s been since the start of the pregnancy. Tuesday, it was up drastically, to the highest it’s been since I started taking meds. We’re talking a 30-40 point jump in the top number and a 20 point jump on the bottom, in a little more than 24 hours. I also gained 5 pounds overnight. My urine was clean, but you could almost see the poor midwife figuring that that had to be some sort of fluke. So I got the distinct displeasure of providing blood for a PIH panel to the one lady in the lab who seems determined to perfect the art of bruising. I can’t whine too hard, though, since we skipped the 24 hour urine. I guess she figured if I wouldn’t spill it in a cup, I wouldn’t spill it in a jug, either. Heh.
So here I sit, crying in my Wheaties, waiting for my (extra) appointment tomorrow morning to roll around, trying not to completely freak out. I was actually really starting to believe that I could pull off the rest of this pregnancy without any major problems, but I probably should have known better. Jay, bless him, thinks that it might be a freak reading, and there’s a chance that he’s right. Given the changes in my body over the last few days, though, including my hands deciding to swell so badly that I can’t close them in the mornings and the freaky weight gain, I’d have to bet against it.
I’m upset about this on so many levels that I can’t really express clearly what is bothering me. Mostly I think it’s that I had finally started to believe that everything was going to go smoothly, and I really, really resent this evidence that my body really can’t be trusted. Never mind that Sadie is doing extraordinarily well, that I managed to grow a big, strong monster of a baby (who currently has the hiccups). I still feel like an utter failure.
Welcome to motherhood, I guess.