Old Blog Posts: June 2009

We got a surprise ultrasound at my dr’s appointment today!  I was so glad that Joan was here to see the latest ultrasound of the baby.  It is looking much more like a baby–even moving its little arms and legs.  When we told Willie that we were seeing pictures of the baby he said “coochie coochie coo” at the screen, and then he stole the ultrasound pictures and wouldn’t let us have them.  They were HIS “belly baby pictures.”  I get another ultrasound at my next appointment in 4 weeks where they’ll check on my cyst again, and then another at 18 weeks (that will be the big “boy or girl” day)!  I’m glad I get so many ultrasounds this time–it’s so fun!

I so don’t have time for this but I want to remember the funny thing Nic told me this morning.

After Nic got out of bed to get ready Will and I shared the big bed and went back to sleep.  When Nic came to kiss us goodbye he said “look at Will–he looks just like an angel when he sleeps.”

I mumbled something like “roahr.”

He continued:  “When Will sleeps, he just closes his eyes and there he is–looking just like an angel.  When you sleep, it looks like someone dropped you from a great height and just left you there.” and he proceeded to show me my screnched up “I’ve been dropped from a great height” sleeping face and flailed limbs.

And it was funny because it’s true.

Instead of a backyard, we have a dirt/weed lot.  We tilled up all of the remaining dead grass/weeds about a month and a half ago to put in a sprinkler system and some sod, but on the few days we’ve had off, Nic hasn’t felt much like tackling that giant project.

Will doesn’t mind.  Because garden hose + dirt pit = ucky mun.  And nothing makes Will happier than ucky mun.  (Although sometimes he calls it stinky or sticky mun.  And that makes him happy, too.)

Today he was having a blast with his hose and his puddles and ran around collecting all of his dinosaurs to stick them in the swamp and I was sitting here in the dining room proofing photos wishing I had a camera to take photos of him with.  And then I realized that just because it’s in the car and would require me finding a memory card doesn’t mean that I don’t actually have a camera.  So I went and got it to take a few pictures.  When Will saw me he said: “hey–don’t take a picture of mun!”  “hey–what’s the big idea?!”

Which reminded me that I haven’t shared his “hey–what’s the big idea?!” phrase.  And it needed to be shared cause it CRACKS ME UP.

Nic left us this morning with those words.  Because for some reason, Will thinks Nic works “making hippos.”  He occasionally tells me during the day “Daddy’s at work.  Daddy making hippos.”

I would give money to know where he got that idea!

I got myself drugs for morning sickness.  I debated whether or not to call my nurse-midwife and beg for them…but it is SO NICE to be nausea free!

I’m gonna have to switch to a different medicine, though.  This one is GREAT at stopping the nausea, but renders me drunk and incompetent.  Yesterday I fell asleep multiple times in multiple positions before finally going to bed at…7:00.  My bones had turned to jell-o.  But I woke up this morning and still felt well, so at least there’s that!

Willie is currently sharing a cup of ginger ale with me.  Soda, or “soya” as he calls it, is one of his most favorite things in the world.  Sometimes I worry about Will and how he’s spent his entire life living east of the Rockies.  He has no idea what “pop” is, and thinks Dairy Queen only serves cool treats.  There are no hot eats east of the Rockies.  Dairy Queen is strictly a dessert location–no delicious fries or hamburgers.  If you get lucky they’ll have hot dogs.

I’ve come to terms with my yucky medical condition enough to finally acknowledge it here.  My last dr’s appointment SUCKED.  I had horrible pain the night prior, and would have gone to an urgent care clinic, but knew I had an ultrasound the very next morning and decided that since I wasn’t bleeding, I’d just wait for the appointment.  I was totally prepping myself the whole morning for bad news.  We got to the ultrasound and she couldn’t find the baby.  She could find the yolk sac, and kept telling me that it was intact and looked good, but for 3-4 full minutes she couldn’t find anything else.  This felt like half an hour.  It is an outrageously long time to be having someone look for a baby.  She found the baby, showed it to me, I saw the heartbeat, but completely without any of the usual “take a minute and look at your baby” type stuff she moved the ultrasound wand, and asked “does this hurt?” while looking at me as if she was waiting for me to burst into tears.

When a dr asks “does this hurt?” and gives you that look and it DOES hurt, you know it’s not good.  She spends another 8 minutes looking over at that side.  Which was not only really uncomfortable, but now I was sure that I had cancer.  And so even though the baby WAS fine (if a bit of a master at hide-and-seek) it doesn’t matter cause I’m gonna have to immediately go to the hospital for a quick hysterectomy followed by chemotherapy and radiation.  She told me that I have a complex dermoid cyst on my ovary (if you ever want to eat again, don’t google it) and that Sharon, my midwife, would talk to me about it.

Sharon told me that everything’s fine, and she doesn’t want me to worry, but I have this cyst, and it’s a weird gross kind of cyst that gets hair and teeth and stuff (at this point I’m looking around the room for a scalpel cause I’m gonna take that thing out MYSELF) and it’s something that normally they would want to take out immediately, but they don’t want to do surgery on a pregnant woman if they can help it, so the plan is for me to take tylenol for the pain, and they’ll monitor it for growth.  If it grows, they’ll take it out in the second trimester.  If it doesn’t, they’ll wait until 4-6 weeks after I deliver.

I spent the next three days being totally freaked out.  We had a wedding to go to that afternoon, and the stress of the wedding and the not-finding-the-baby, and the weird growth left me shaky and just wanting to go to bed.  I figured once I went to sleep I’d be able to process everything and wake up okay.  Not so.  I woke up the next morning still totally freaked out about the thing in my body that’s gross and doesn’t belong.

But I got used to it and I’m almost not totally freaked out every time I think about my midsection.

In other news, Will talked to the baby for the first time this weekend.  He normally refuses to believe that there’s a baby in mommy’s tummy (“no–that’s MOMMY!” he always says) but for some reason, for a three minute period this weekend he believed.  His response to the idea was to SHOUT into my belly button “HI BABY!!!  HELLO BABY!!!!”

Will continues to love preschool.  He has a best friend named Alex.  I’m not sure if Will is Alex’s best friend or if it’s just one-sided.  According to Will, they run and play monsters together and when I picked Will up at nap-time last week (we had a wedding and needed to leave early) they had their cots set up next to each other.  The best news is that Alex is a really good boy.  Unlike Christopher, who is definitely The Little Shit of P-1, and whom I would forbid Will to befriend, Alex is a quiet and nice and seems pretty low-energy.  Surprising, but comforting.

Is that to a three year old, they look and taste a helluva lot like lollipops.

The other problem is that they do make you feel better, but only while you’re actively sucking on one.

That 50lb weight gain with Will is seeming less and less like a self control issue and more and more like an inevitability…

When Will started spending some full days at preschool he started calling me “Miss Mommy” on occassion.  It cracked me up…but not nearly as much as:

“Miss Mommy!  Miss Daddy!”

You can’t blame him.  At preschool all adults are “Miss.”  After a few weeks of occassionally being called “Miss Daddy” Nic has started correcting Will:  “No, honey–it’s Mr Daddy Sir.”

The morning sickness is getting worse, so I popped into the archives of my computer to dig up my old blog from when I was pregnant with Will.  And was distraught to read that it’s going to get much worse, and it’s going to last a LOT longer.  Apparently it went away briefly at around 9 weeks only to return with gusto and leave me barfing up cereal for the rest of the summer and most of the fall.  If things go the way they did last time, I can expect to feel better…sometime in September.

Just in case you were counting, we have like 30 weddings between now and September.

Last night I was having a dream and I was super nauseated in the dream.  Pretty much the worst dream ever.  And then I woke up and was so sick.  I shouted “Nic!  I need a bucket!” and waited for him to find the will to get out of bed, go downstairs, and bring me a bucket.  I figured this would take about five minutes.  Instead, he reached beside his dresser and handed me a bucket.

Dude–second time fathers are PREPARED.

I’m experimenting with different breakfast “cures” to nausea and rice seems to work pretty nicely.  It totally cured me yesterday, but has only moderately done the trick today.  Will is used to it now–he starts the morning by asking “is your tummy grummle?  is your tummy six [sick]?”  I am grateful that three mornings a week he starts his day at preschool, where they don’t simply hand him a nutragrain bar, turn on Handy Manny, and lay down with him on the sofa groaning.

This can’t last until September.  It just can’t!

Willie just brought a cupfull of sand into the house, filled it to the brim with water, and then spilled some of it on the floor.

I made some kind of noise that prompted Will to respond,

“It’s okay, Mommy.  Accidents happen.”

I’m super excited to see the baby’s heartbeat at our ultrasound tomorrow.

With Will, there was so much to do and think about at this stage.  So much research and reading and decisions to make.  This time, it’s kinda boring right now!  We’ve got our names picked out, the doctor picked out, we decided that Will’s gonna keep his toddler bed in toddler bed configuration and we’re going to get a crib…I already know what to expect when I’m expecting, so there’s not even new reading to be done!

All there’s left to do is eagerly await the next stages.  For instance, with Will I was dreading the day I wouldn’t fit into my clothes.  I thought the sooner that day came, the less good of a woman I was.  This time?  I freaking CAN’T WAIT for the day that all of my pants have stretchy elastic waistbands.  WHAT IS BETTER THAN LIFE IN COMFY PANTS?!  You know what else I’m excited about?  Farting all the time.  For the last three and a half years I’ve been sitting here at my desk, a sad sitting duck victim of Nic’s disgusting fart-bombs.  For the next 7 months?  I’m gonna fight back.

If you’ve hung out with Will in the last five months you’ve probably noticed his habit of picking his nose and then eating it.  He’s been sick so much since starting preschool that it’s turned into some sort of comfort thing.  I’m thinking of looking into a patch.  Or just having him take up smoking.

He does it as he tries to put himself back to sleep.  And the more I say “no fingers in noses” the higher he sticks that puppy up there.

Today I was re-curling my hair (something our Seattle-like weather this week has made a regular occurrence in the mid-afternoon) and Will came in, sucking on his finger.

“Mmmm.” he said.  “Booger’s tasty.”

Apparently keeping Will away from his own snot is like trying to keep me away from Sonic.  I know it’s disgusting and bad for me and makes me gross to look at, but I just can’t help it.  It’s so darn delicious.