It's Raining Babies...

That's not actually true. Today is lovely and sunny. For once. But I DID have my baby shower this past weekend. Before we get into that, let's talk about a few other pregnancy-related items, while they are fresh in my mind, (and heavy on my bladder).

Third Trimester Nonsense:

In a lot of ways, the third trimester has thus far been like a scaled-down version of the first trimester.

Symptoms of the First Trimester That Have Returned to Bite Me:

1. Alternating Dire-Rear versus Constipation

Ah. Perhaps I missed you most of all. When one's intestinal tract goes schizophrenic. I remember asking the doctor about this in the first trimester, when it initially reared its hideous head, and he said, "oh yes, it is perfectly normal. Until later in pregnancy, when you will JUST have constipation."

I didn't suffer much from constipation during the second trimester, or even the first half of the third...(a fact I attribute to the near-daily ingestion of high-fiber cereals and yogurt)...but now my first trimester schizo gut is back. I know it's common for pregnant women to have the Dire Rear before beginning labor - which is actually a really good thing for everyone involved and means you can skip the optional enema at the hospital - but my body decided that doing that just before labor wouldn't be ENOUGH. Two months worth of it though? Yeah that sounds about right. Only, you know, that would dehydrate us. And we're pregnant! We can't be having with that! So let's make sure that half the week, we retain everything, just in case.

Gah. Gah with bells on.

2. Inability to Eat

In the first trimester, this was because of the insane smell-aversion nausea I was having. This trimester, I wake up feeling queasy but usually it passes by mid-morning. Instead, I had the awesome taste buds of doom episode to contend with. For the most part, that's self-resolved. The doctor who examined me said it was probably caused by a virus that had already passed through my system and gone, but the irritated taste buds remained. Slowly but surely they've gotten better. I can now eat most things without feeling the need to throw up. Except for sweets. Chocolate, ice cream, whipped cream - anything sugary has a distinct and really unpleasant medicinal aftertaste to it at the back of the tongue.

No doubt the midwife at my OB's practice would call it a blessing, considering my "ample" weight gain.

(Incidentally, I haven't gained weight in nearly two weeks. Or I lost it, and then gained it back. Either way...I weighed in today at 162.5 I believe.)

3. Fatigue

It's back. Some days I wake up and immediately wish I hadn't. There are days when I think it will take an act of God or war or me actually being on fire to get me out of bed. (Owning two Newfs is a bit like combining all three though - when they decide it's time for them to have breakfast, I get up. Or else.)

Other days I wake up and feel almost normal. There does not appear to be any rhyme or reason to this phenomenon. Or at least, I haven't figured it out yet. I just do my best to get EVERYTHING that I need to get done, done on the days I feel like a human being. On the other days, I sit on a couch and hold my head like a dainty lady in a Regency romance novel, and feel sorry for myself, and vow to never, NEVER, do this again no matter how good an idea it seems at the time.

4. The Arrival of the Tit Fairy

She's back too. They've gotten bigger, and I hear it is as nothing to what will happen two days or so after I give birth. May god have mercy on our souls.

5. Dizziness

Only appears on the days when I'm also experiencing fatigue. But yeah, I've got that back too.

6. Frequent Urination

Hah! HAH! That sounds almost like I'm implying that one spends some amount of time NOT urinating. You don't. You know you're in the home stretch of your pregnancy when you are happiest in your bathroom, within five feet of a toilet, at any given moment. Seriously - it's insane. Whenever I stand up from a seated position I am forced to take off in my sexiest of gaits (the quick-waddle) toward the nearest facility - as Rhys' head goes *BOING!* onto my bladder. Gravity = not my friend.

Considering the near-Herculean attempts I've made to stay hydrated following that one episode of clustered contractions that I had a few weeks ago, I spend an unholy amount of time counting the tiles in my bathroom. Getting up 6 times a night to use the restroom is not unheard of. On one memorable night, I got up on the hour, every hour. Take my advice, pregnant women: in your second trimester, invest in a trip to Costco or Sam's Club or similar, and stock up on toilet paper.

Incidentally - the middle of the night is the worst in terms of waddling...the sudden return of gravity to everything in your midsection causes pressure in your pelvis you wouldn't believe. It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally realized who my middle-of-the-night walk reminded me of. Skip ahead to the 3 minute, 20 second mark. Go ahead. I'll wait.

Yeah. SEXY.

7. Sudden Stabbing Pains in the Groin

God really broke the mold when he invented the whole child-bearing process y'all. It's not enough, you guys, to have to urinate like an incontinent sea slug, to experience gastrointestinal distress of one kind or another on a near-daily basis, to walk like a duck with hip dysplasia, and to go around feeling sick, tired or some combination of the two at all hours of the day. You ALSO get to occasionally feel like someone is stabbing you in your girly bits. Randomly. Most often, in inconvenient public places where suddenly screaming, "OW!" and grabbing at your groin out of pure reflex might be misinterpreted.


Add to all of that the fact that you don't fit into anything - including the maternity jeans you bought during the second trimester - and all of a sudden your emotions are completely out of whack, (I stayed fairly sane for most of my pregnancy but I freely admit that I am a lunatic now), and you've got yourself a third trimester.

Or at least, I do. Everyone is different.


Recent Doctor's Office Visits:

What with the impending baby-ness of it all, etc - I've been spending a lot of time lately at the OB's office. We had our 34 week anatomy scan last week. It went really well, if you consider sitting for 2 hours in a waiting room to be a good thing. Pregnancy has NOT improved my ability to wait patiently, incidentally. And NOTHING was improved by the pregnant woman with her clearly-ill child who was in direct contravention of the sign hanging IMMEDIATELY above her head dictating that women not bring ill family members or children to the practice out of consideration for the other pregnant women in the room. Mysteriously, she had her mother with her. Why couldn't her mom have kept the kid outside or something? Taken him for an ice cream? KEPT HIM THE HELL AWAY FROM ME?

Nor did it help that she let her germy, sugar-psychotic son spend 30 minutes fiddling with the water cooler in the corner while she offered him lollipops and told him not to take things out of the nearby trash can. Ineffectively, I might add. He liked to dip his lollipop in the trash can and then put it back into his face. Then he'd fiddle with the water cooler again. I was gagging over in my corner. When she finally got called back for her appointment, and other folks who hadn't been waiting in the room with her came in, I flinched every time they went to get themselves a drink. Urg.

The nurse finally called us back, the tech took the measurements, his head was measuring right on track, his stomach is still a little ahead of the rest of him, and his legs and arms are measuring short, (I'm giving birth to a T-rex. Awesome.) I stared levelly at the doctor while he discussed all of this with us. Then I said, "Doc. You can tell me. Are we talking dwarfism here?"

He said, emphatically, "no." Rhys is in the 40th percentile for legs, 30th for arms - which is not within dwarfism ranges. Then he pointed out that Sandy is rather deficient in the arms and legs department. The two hour wait in the waiting room was insult - this was injury. But at least it was amusing injury.

He estimated Rhys' weight at 5 1/2 lbs. Which puts Rhys right on track to being an 8+ lb baby if he goes to term. My poor, poor, poor girly bits.

Still, all in all, I was relieved. Because I'd been expecting to hear, "HOLY CRAPOLA HE'S ALREADY 8 POUNDS!" (If you felt him land on your bladder at 2 a.m. you'd think he was 8 lbs too, okay?)

We had another doctor's appointment, with my beloved Dr. G, today. Whereupon I discovered that my weight has been static for two weeks, and also that Rhys' heartbeat is in the high 140's low 150's. Dr. G had been giving it to me for the past month or so at 130+ so when they told me at the high risk practice that it was around 158 last week, I was pretty freaked out. Dr. G said it can be normal for their heart rate to fluctuate between 120 and 160, especially if they've recently been active versus sleeping etc.

If anyone is curious, my blood pressure was 122/70 this morning. Which I think is pretty good for a grossly pregnant woman...especially considering that they put me in an exam room and then cranked up the heat to 2,000 degrees. Well, that's what it felt like anyway. And me there bare-bottomed on the paper strip on the examination table, with a paper lap napkin covering the important bits. Things got a bit sweaty. Um. Needless to say, when Dr. G finally arrived and asked me to scoot down for the exam, both the paper strip beneath me and I scooted. It was a little embarrassing.

He eyeballed my amniotic fluid because I've noticed Rhys has been less active lately - not just in terms of strength of movement, but also in terms of frequency - he really only moves a lot after meals. This is in direct opposition to his previous habit of being active all day long every day and all night also. But my fluid levels are okay, and Rhys tried to kick the ultrasound wand off my stomach, so Dr. G isn't concerned about him.

Dr. G pointed out his big fat cheeks as well. Sandy tried to warn Dr. G not to talk about the cheeks, because I've been having emotional breakdowns about the fact that Rhys' 3D ultrasound picture made him look like a hairless, horrifyingly squashed Chris Farley. (I know I should just keep praying that he's healthy, and not worry about anything else. But you guys I'm not kidding - the 3D ultrasound picture made him look like maybe he was one of a set of triplets, and he ATE the other two while in utero. Jabba the Hut baby. So. Not. Cute. And I've got the Normal-I-Oh-So-Sincerely-Hope pre-delivery fears that I won't be able to love him, and adding to these fears the fact that he's going to come out looking like this...is not helping.)

Um. This post is getting away from me. Sorry.

Anyway - other than reminding me of the fact that my baby is possibly already morbidly obese, today's visit was good. We got to see his diaphragm expanding and contracting - Dr. G said he was breathing. Wild. Dr. G swabbed me for the Strep B culture, and also sent me to the lab for a CBC and HIV blood test - required by the hospital. He then gave me a quick run down of symptoms I need to call him immediately over: bleeding, contractions 5 minutes apart, one minute long, for more than a hour, my water breaking - that sort of thing.

He also told me after the fun-for-everyone pelvic exam that I'm 50 % effaced, and at -2 station. (Which means my cervix is softening - yay! - and that Rhys' head has dropped a bit further down into my pelvis. My bladder could have told him that much.) But I'm not dilating yet, which is just fine.

So. 35 1/2 weeks, and still hanging in there.

Baby Shower post is gonna have to come later - this wound up being a lot longer than I expected it to, sorry y'all...