Miscellaneous stuff

I was the sickests I've been in probably a decade for the past couple of weeks. I had an awful, nagging, never-leave-you-alone cold with a cough that could rattle the windows of my house. It was terrible.

I'm not one to be sick - ever. I have my grandfather's constitution - which got passed from my mom to me. I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've been on medication for anything in the last twelve years. What this all means is that when I do get sick, I'm a terrible patient. I whine and complain and I'm in denial that I actually need to rest.

Thankfully, however, this cold/flu was SO bad that I couldn't deny it at all. It laid me out for a full two weeks. It was just last Thursday that I actually started to feel like myself again.

I saw my mid wife during the throws of my sickness and she diagnosed me with a viral infection. Ugh. Eventually, she persuaded me to take some antibiotics (I hate them, so I put it off as long as possible). I felt better in a couple of days after the meds kicked in.

It was during this appointment that I told her about another symptom I'd been having - all over itchiness. My whole body itches all the time. I get woken up by it, I can't fall asleep because of it. It's particularly excruciating when I'm still and/or at night. It feels like I have poison ivy all over my body, all the time. It sucks.

She referred me to get some blood work done to make sure that my liver is functioning (I guess itchiness can be a sign of liver failure). Everything was fine there (thankfully), so she told me to use Dove soap from now on. There's no marks or rashes or blemishes on my skin that would indicate I need to see a dermatologist, but still the itching persists.

My mom told me that her prenatal vitamin had made her itchy - it was a reaction to the niacin in the pill. My mid wife told me to stop taking the prenatal vitamin (you don't really need it after your 3rd month) - but no change.

I hate to complain about a stupid symptom when such amazing things are happening in my body, but this one sucks. It's hard to gracefully scratch your boobs in public. It's tougher to get away with going braless when you're chest has swelled to a double D.

So I'm not sure what to do about all of this, except wait and hope that another solution to the problem arises. In the meantime, Brian bought me a great backscratcher and I'm putting it to good use!

My last check up

Wow, a lot of time has gone by since my last posting on this blog. So here's the scoop:

I had my last check up with my midwife three weeks ago (!). There wasn't an ultrasound scheduled or anything, it was just a check up. Turns out that I had lost almost two pounds. For a normal sized woman, this probably wouldn't be such a good thing but for me (since I started the pregancy at my heaviest weight every), it's pretty good. All in all, I'm down 1.5 pounds since getting pregnant. It's fantastic, actually, and I'm really proud of myself. I'm just getting to the point now where I could really feed my face full of sweets and carbs, so controlling myself from here on out may be a bit more difficult. Yesterday I woke up with the strongest craving I've ever had in my life.....for a chocolate donut. I'm totally serious - I would have sold my husband into slavery for a Dunkin' Donuts. Thankfully, there's an amazing bakery about a mile from our house and they had just what I wanted. Three donuts later, I was a happy camper. :)

Anyway, the rest of the check up went well. Kathryn tried to find the baby's heart beat using a sonogram machine, but she couldn't find it. She asked another, more experienced midwife to come in and try to find the baby's heartbeat, but that didn't work either. Apparently, most babies really can't stand the feeling of the sonogram (it sends sound waves to bounce off of their bodies), so they swim away from the machine. Isn't that incredible? Anyway, they told me not to be alarmed but that they were going to send me for an ultrasound (which they had to call an "emergency ultrasound" in order for radiology to fit me in). I was calm, but I called Brian because I figured he'd want to be there.

It took them over an hour to squeeze me in to the schedule. During that hour, I had a lot of time to think about what could possibly be wrong with the baby. I tried to stay calm, but I started to get nervous that something was really wrong. The second we saw our little peanut on the screen, it was clear that everything was fine. That little heart was pumping away, rhythmic and strong. The baby is SO much bigger - over five inches long at that point!! It was hard to believe that something so big could be inside of me and I couldn't feel it.

The doctors measured the baby from every possible angle and showed us the skull and the spine and the feet and hands and everything. It's tough to decipher all of the little bits and pieces on a black and white screen, so it was helpful to have a "guide." (Weird that you need a guide to your own uterus, right?)

Seeing the baby's face and recognizing that it really looks like a person was an amazing moment. Brian and I just gaped at the screen in silence. It was pretty neat.

I asked the doctors to see if they could determine our peanut's gender, but the baby's positioning didn't cooperate. Ever since then, though, I've had a strange sensation that it's a girl. Brian has, too. We'll find out (hopefully) on March 8th, if the baby cooperates and pulls a spread eagle for us.

More will be revealed!!