Another Friday

This morning I woke up with a bad headache and a neck ache. It was very much like the one I woke up with on Friday, April 13. This time however it was the right side of my neck not the left. I didn't want to get out of bed. I was terrified. The pain wasn't quite as bad, but still bad and in the exact same place but mirrored. I wanted to be heavily medicated and just sleep through the day and wake up tomorrow to know what is to be. But since that wasn't going to happen I pulled my ass out of bed and got ready for work. The damn headache just kept getting worse and worse.

I got my room setup at work and then went to find the ENT that was working. He is one on the doctors that has been with me on this since the beginning. I asked him if this could be happening again and he told me no. I reminded him that he said my face wasn't going to be paralysed like this the first time. He said he has only seen it happen once in 30 years and told me it wasn't going to happen to me. I was still scared and anxious most of the morning. The headache kept getting worse and spread up the back of the right side of my head and wrapped around to the front. Sadly this miserable headache was a relief. It was just a bad, no horrible, headache. If this happened to the other side of my face I think it would be more than I could handle. The left side of my face is making progress, but still not at all good. I wouldn't be able to speak and eating would be nightmare, and my poor eyes. I just keep thanking God that things are going well with the baby since the rest of me is falling apart. I know that many of my friends and coworkers are almost as worried as I am about what might happen to me next. I know that we all are aware that there are still a lot of pregnancy related things that could go wrong. I just keep praying that God is going to carry me through this.

What?!? I can't believe my ears!

My husband just called. Well, texted for a bit and then called. His train hasn't moved in over three hours. You tend to get a bit bored when that happens I guess. Apparently it also makes you think about what you would like to name your unborn child. Tiger is getting a real name!!!! I had said a name one time while we were watching something on TV and I guess it stuck with him. I'm pretty sure he made a joke about it at the time. He brought up that name and another name that was on the list of 23 names I gave him to ponder. (he didn't take the list because it was next to his chair where I was sitting). I asked him if he remembered that the name he was considering was my grandmother's last name. (my mother's father died long before I was born and my grandma remarried at least five years later) That would be a nice way to remember, but that wasn't his intention because he didn't remember that. I like the name, but I am mixed because I am still very sad about the death of my grandma this January. I told him the three names I liked the best off the list and he mulled them over for a bit. Long and short, full and nick. He thought they were all pretty good and we could decided from those three. I told him I didn't want to disregard the other name since he felt strongly about it. It is an Irish name after all and that is pleasing to dad. I want to say we have narrowed it down, but that isn't exactly true. Now we HAVE a list to pick a name from. I guess he had to yell and stomp, but he did still hear what I said. I'll be...

I plead insanity!

I believe I have finally gone completely insane. My husband didn't go to work on Saturday or Sunday. He actually didn't go to work until this afternoon. Did he, or rather, did "we" spend Sunday working on the nursery? Well... not really. He managed to get up out of the chair and into the baby's room for an hour maybe an hour and a half total. He did have time to go hang out with his friend that is really pissing my off. He had to just drop something off at his house and be right back. That took two hours. I was fuming by the time he got home. Monday, he did manage to do quite a bit of work and he did finally come to the belief that we can't keep the computer in the baby's room. I had to nudge him just a little bit more, but he mostly had decided that on his own. Yesterday... well... He literally did nothing for the entire day.

We have communication issues. I try to talk to him about what is bothering me or what my problems are and it generally doesn't go well. I try to talk. He gets louder and louder. I cry. He yells and stomps out. Then I cry some more. Some time passes and we try to come to some sort of understanding in a quieter way.

I am tired. My weekend sucked. It was in the upper nineties Sunday and Monday and it didn't cool down much at night. It was also really humid, or way worse than we are used to. I haven't slept well at all. I am so frustrated with my body. I am tired of my face hurting and not getting better. It is all I can do to go back to work each day. Then add in my frustration with my husband. The weather was finally better last night and I got myself off to bed about 940. That is earlier than usual, but my body is really wanting 10-12 hours of sleep right now. That would mean I should be in bed by no later than 7pm and that just isn't going to happen. So I got in bed and out of frustration I cried. My husband never comes to bed with me. That is something I whine about actually. He came to bed not fifteen minutes after I got there so I was still crying. I wasn't sobbing I was just quietly crying, but he figured it out pretty quickly. He wanted to know what was wrong. I said I didn't want to fight and that I was just frustrated with everything right now and I just needed to cry. He wouldn't let me be and said he wouldn't get mad and he wouldn't yell and how could he help if I wouldn't tell him. I told him I really just wanted to go to sleep. He wouldn't let it go and so I selected my words very carefully. I am not trying to be mean. I may be mad, but I'm not going to say mean or hurtful things. It didn't matter. He yelled, he threatened to quit his job and stomped off. He went into the basement and threw a bunch of stuff around. I went to see what he was doing and he said he was getting off his ass and getting some work done. So I cried some more and he yelled at me for crying. I went back to bed, but didn't sleep. I was actually on call last night and for once I just kept hoping the phone would ring and I could get out of the house. It never did. He came to bed after an hour maybe. I still didn't sleep. I don't know if I even got three hours of sleep. I am so tired. He was still sleeping when I left so I didn't get to talk to him and he left before I got home so I didn't get to talk to him. I feel bad. I have broken blood vessels under both of my eyes and on the sides of my nose by my eyes from crying so hard. I didn't know until someone at work asked what the hell happened to me.

I just don't know what to do anymore. I just feel broken on the inside and out. At least it is cooler and cloudy today and not humid for now. I don't go to work until 1100 tomorrow and I am hoping to finally get some sleep tonight. I just hope the dogs will be forgiving for just one morning and let me sleep. They have to be able to tell how thin and tight the thread that is holding me together right now is.

Frustration

I am a basket case today. Well, maybe I am more than just today, but today is worse. I am freaking out about what we don't have done and my husband's lack of ambition. I know he is still very stressed right now about his job and I am trying to just give him a little more time and space but I think I am about to go crazy and cause him physical harm. Instead of that I have been washing walls and scrubbing things. He keeps finding me cleaning something different and he tells me I need to take it easy because I am almost seven and half months pregnant. I am trying so hard not to get start a fight with him because I know he is so on edge, but SOMEONE has to do something around here.

He isn't getting anything done. At least nothing that is important to me. Except that I went in and woke him up at 930 this morning to come kill a wasp in the living room. You would have thought I had asked him to build me a pyramid. He told me to just stay away from it and he would take care of it when he woke up. I am severely allergic to these things. Apparently we have a nest right outside our front door. One flew in the screen he has neglected to fix. I guess he decided that my safety was more important than his sleep because he did get up with in a few minutes and come take care of it. In addition to that he "cleaned" the garage. I only saw him take things out and then put them back in a different messy manner. Whatever. Then he went to "coffee" with his dad.

He is extremely frustrated with how the railroad is handling some staffing right now. I guess some people newer than him have been set up as engineers. They were put in regular pool positions. When he was set up as an engineer he tried to get put in a pool position and he was told that there was no way in hell that was going to happen. So now he is mad. He thinks he should punish them and not go to work. HELLO!!! Last Saturday he came home from work about 1600 and he has only worked one time since then and it wasn't because of the railroad. He doesn't work, he doesn't get paid. Makes sense right? Pregnant wife, bills to pay, essentially nothing bought for baby. He came to me and said that "WE" need to get the baby's room cleaned out. Well, part of "we" has done everything she can. Now he thinks he should get to stay home from work tonight and "we" clean out the room tomorrow.

I just want to scream at him, but I don't. Instead I wash or scrub something. I want to shake him until I jar some sense into his head. Instead I scrub something else. Right now every issue I have with my husband is magnified. All the flaws that I try to accept are screaming out at me. He told me his plan for tomorrow and I started crying out of frustration. Just a couple of tears running down my cheeks and now I am the bad guy. I didn't stomp and yell and tell him he needs to grow up, like I wanted to. So he gets mad at me and throws a little fit and stomps off to the bedroom to go to bed because he is going to have to go to work.

I am just having a harder time dealing with these things right now. All my emotions just seem intensified. It makes me tired!!! I had to vent. But I'm not running short on things to scrub so here I go...

Hormones, work, stress!

I don't know what it is but I have been a mess today. My face is really hurting. I was really sick this morning and I have just been a mess. I had myself a little meltdown at work. I just started crying while listening to a group of grown women bicker for 20 minutes about whose turn it was with the microwave. My head hurt and they just would shut up. I cried and gave up and went back to my OR without getting to eat lunch. There were still two people in front of me in the microwave line. I only get 30 minute lunch! The stupid thing was that half of the people in the room were actually in surgeries. The other half had finished or weren't assigned rooms. Tell me who do you think got the microwave first???

I wasn't even back in my room for 45minutes before one of the unassigned people came and told me I had to go to my boss's office because she needed to talk to me. Great. She started out being all nice, but I knew something was coming since she sent someone in and she closed the door. She said she knew things have been difficult and she heard that I was upset. Is there anything "we" can do for you? Gee, I tried to talk to her before and she was nasty as hell??? Here it comes I am thinking. I took an instrument to the instrument room. It had been labeled incorrectly and when we opened it we didn't want it. The people that work in there said I was rude to them!!! This was the last thing I thought was coming. I didn't do anything. I was trying not to bother two people that were working. I was trying to help them by taking it to where the clean instruments are kept and I couldn't get in the door because it was blocked by a giant cart. So I told them it was clean and that it had just been labeled wrong so it just needed to be put up again. I asked them where I could put it and they told her I was nasty and just slammed it down on these totes. I just stared at my boss. Of the many things I MAY have done this wasn't one of them. She pulls out a whole bunch of instruments like the one I took them and asks me to identify them as to which one is it we were needing and which one I took them, like I didn't know what the hell I was doing. She told me I needed to watch my tone with them because we can't afford to lose any more of our aides. I was shocked because I hadn't done anything wrong, but at the same time, after being around my husband for so long, I wanted to ask her if she thought nurses - experienced and department oriented nurses - grew on trees! My husband was not pleased when I told him my little story. It is funny, or scary, how many of the husbands of my coworkers want to cause physical harm to my boss.

Bouncing boy

I like to yank my shirt up to my bra and watch my belly. Mike thinks I am nuts and laughs at me, but this evening he actually understood. I try and try to get him to watch but Tiger ALWAYS stops when his daddy is watching. I got him to come over and like always he stopped his beating around in there. So Mike walked away and a minute or two later he started up again. I called him back and this time he finally got to see. The movements are getting bigger and more pronounced. It hardly looks (and feels) like there is much of anything in between the wall of my uterus and my skin. What used to be little thumbs in one place are now large whacks that you can see in 2-3 inch movements. Sometimes it is uncomfortable, but it is so cool to watch. What it must be like to have 2 or 3 of them doing that!

I have gone through a book of baby names and highlighted the ones I like. I have presented this to my husband. I don't think he has looked at it yet. I am threatening him that I really will pick my own name and soon if he won't take this more seriously. The problem is there are still to many names that I like. I need for him to say he hates this one or that one is a possibility.

I got scared this weekend. I took Molly for a walk on a different route. We usually go to the end of our street and go up the hill on the busy county road. The speed limit is 55. There is little along the end but tall grass and then a canal and there are many many trees to obstruct a motorists' view of us. This usually isn't too bad and eventually we level out and you can see for quite a distance. But we haven't been going that far for awhile and there is no other way to get back if I get tired. No options. So instead, we walked down to the other end of the street and it loops around to the street just south of our house. It does this a couple of times so it gives us some options for how far we go and the ability to get back home a shorter route if we need to. The disadvantage to this is that there are lots of dogs. Lots of unfenced or tethered dogs. We passed a house of a dog we didn't know. His owners were outside working and he viewed us as a threat and he charged right after us. Molly is generally very happy-go-lucky. Kind of a ditsy blond actually. She has always tended to hide behind me if she thought the dog was aggressive. She might bark loudly and she has a big bark but it was from the farthest point from the other dog. For the most part, she wants to play with that other dog unless they don't like her presence. This was different and she fought. I have developed a tone that can get most dogs to back off and get her under control without much issue but not here. She has become so protective of me and she took this dog on. I didn't know what to do. The owners of the other dog just yelled at him and he didn't care. I got Molly pulled back but it was after she scuffled with him. I was scared. What do you do? We came close another time recently but between her snarling and my shooing the other dog it backed off. The funny thing was that we walked not three houses down the road and she saw another dog, one she knows and was a giant puppy again in less than three minutes. I have always wondered if she had that side in her or not. I mean I assumed she did because she is a dog, but I haven't seen it before. There have been a few times that Mike and I have had some, um, loud discussions and she will put herself right next to me between us and she sits at attention watching him, but I have never been scared before of my own dog. Mostly that I wasn't going to be able to get control of her and that it was such a physically difficult thing for me to do right now with her being such a big girl. The other dog was Lab mix as well, but whatever he was mixed with was a lot smaller than Molly's dad. She probably had about forty pounds on him. I wonder what would have happened if he had been a larger dog...

Okay, I have a baby shower question. One of my friends (J) wants to have a shower for me which is very nice. Another friend suddenly wants to help is telling her what we should do. She is also offering large amounts of money to do this and isn't sure if she will be able to make it. She is saying that J should serve alcohol and telling her what we should and should not do. Has anyone ever been to a baby shower where the guests get all liquored up??? I have not and neither has J. We are thinking that it is inappropriate. It also seems nuts to offer $500 to buy the alcohol and to put towards food. J loves to do brunch parties and have punch and rolls and fruit and that kind of thing. I think that is totally fine, as long as there is cake. She knows I am all about cake right now ;) Put even a champagne punch seems wrong to us. For God's sake I'm PREGNANT!!! Any thoughts or suggestions? It is nice of her to want to be so generous. I don't want to sound greedy but she can just give us a REALLY nice gift instead (a fraction of that would be a really nice gift). Why would you slap out that much money and not plan to be there? Odds are very slim that she is going to come. Anyway what do you think? Any experience with such baby showers?

Yesterday was a yucky day. I only got 2 hours sleep Friday night. Every once and awhile I just can't sleep. Fortunately for me it is usually around a weekend, but not always. I would lay down and when it was apparent no sleep was coming I would get up and do something so at least I was being productive. I don't know how many times I did this. My plan was to let myself sleep as late as I could Saturday even though I said I would go help with the garage sale I dumped my extra crap off at. Well, I would have been on time if I hadn't had given myself extra time to recover from the vomiting.

There are tons of extra people in our community this weekend. We are hosting an annual antique car race that always draws quite a few people. In conjunction, a our local farm and ranch museum hosted an antique tractor show that actually brings quite a few people as well. I have never gone to that but I guess it too is quite a to do. My neighbor laughs because she says that is where her retirement is. She and her husband own a local green house and he has a collection of about 100 antique tractors. I think it is an addiction rather than a collection, but who is splitting hairs. He had to relocate his business a couple of years ago so that he could have enough space to store the tractors. Luckily for us, he only has a couple at home, but his motorcycle collection is here and he has just started collecting cars as well. So, with the extra people in town they also have a big craft show at one of the parks.

So the point to this is, with everything going on, they thought having a garage sale before all the days events would start would be a good idea. Judging by the number of adds in the paper and the number of signs plastered around town, so did a lot of other people. Over all the number of shoppers was disappointing, however, we took over three pickup loads full and one load in my SUV and I left the day with only three boxes of crap left over. I was very pleased since my goal was to get rid of crap. Making money was just an added bonus, so I marked stuff really cheap. I didn't think about that until I got there Saturday morning and saw other people had contributed things in say the same category of crap and their prices were higher. Oh well, I guess my crap went first. It was cold and windy and I don't think that helped business. Of course there are always the die hard garage sale addicts out, but I think the weather deterred some of the more casual shoppers like myself.

I "helped" for about four and half hours and then I went to the craft fair. There wasn't much to do to help. I sat in the garage with people who were either old enough to be my parents or grandparents and worked on Tiger's baby blanket. I knew my mom was coming to town yesterday for the craft fair. She and a friend were supposed to be going together so I thought I was in the clear. Wrong. I get a parking place, stopped for an outrageously priced lemonade and made it only to the second booth before I bumped into my mom all alone. She had been looking for me and boy did she have things to show me! It is obvious to me that my needs have changed. I am totally looking at things in a different way. My mom kept trying to show me jewelry which has never been my thing, but even the many many booths of metal yard decorations barely held my interest. I looked only at baby and nursery type things. I didn't feel very good. It was still cool, but very sunny and I still can't squint my left eye. Even with my ugly sun glasses Mike bought me I still have trouble with light and my left eye. I very quickly got a headache. My back also starts to ache pretty quickly when I am on my feet for awhile when I don't have my support hose on, which I didn't. I didn't buy a thing, but I did manage to spend $19.50. What did I buy? Only three things. Lemonade, an ear of my favorite roasted corn, and an Indian taco. I have never bought one of the tacos before, so I don't know about that, but it seems as though the prices of the others each have gone up since last year. I love the corn, but there are two problems with it. Where is corn in season right now? Unless you have had it, you don't know what you are missing, but there is no corn like sweet corn that is grown in the rich black soil of Iowa. When corn is at its very best here it is never as good. The second lacking with my corn was that I put garlic pepper on it instead of garlic salt, since I got a salt lecture on Friday at my OB visit. I knew I was going to eat something else salty so I thought I would try the pepper instead. Not as good.

My plan then was to go home and rest for a little bit and then head back over to the garage sale like I had told them I would. My mom however told me that we were going to my house to get the crib set for the baby and then we were going to the fabric store to look at fabric for the blanket she is making and fabric for curtains. I told her I really wasn't feeling very well and she said it would only take a few minutes. Of course when she walked in my house she started touching everything and picking at things. She immediately walked over to a garbage bag on the living room floor (that has been there for a LONG time) and started digging through it. I has things I am taking to Good.Will, but I was waiting until after the garage sale to go because I hate going there and I only wanted to make one trip. She thought it was new stuff for the baby. I detest how she just starts digging, literally, in my things!!! So I snapped at her. Then she starts folding my husbands underwear. Oh by the way, we have only the one bathroom in our house, and she took it first. Pregnant lady, who had a 48 oz lemonade two hours ago and no bathrooms other than port a potties at the park, be damned.

I do love my mother. I do feel bad that I can't stand her so much. Many of my long term coworkers are very familiar with my mom both by stories and by having been blessed with her acquaintance. They find her humerus and are all glad she is not their mother. There are a couple of people who have lost their mothers and so I try not to complain about mine in front of them. One is pretty much my age and even though my mother drives me absolutely insane, I can't imagine her not being there, to do just that.

So she drags me, or rather I drive to the fabric store. I have a terrible headache at this point and am very crabby. The left side of my face was hurting something awful and the stupid fabric fibers are driving my sinuses nuts. Then I have start having the pains that the nurse says can't be contractions already, even though she tells me to sit or lay down on my left side and drink a lot when I have them and call the doctor if they don't stop in fifteen minutes. The pains where my entire belly tightens wrapping around my back and lasts for anywhere from 30 seconds to about two minutes. I plopped my ass down and put my face in my hands and just let my mother to continue to pass bolt after bolt of fabric in front of my face. It took her about twenty minutes before it dawned on her that I really didn't feel well and then she gathered up her things, got her fabric cut and paid for. It was still another twenty minutes at least before we were out of the store and one of the ladies working there pointed out to her how awful I looked and that I needed to get home. ????

I drove home. My mom built herself a damn nest on my couch and took my remote and said she was going to take a nap. So I sat in Mike's chair and did take a nap for a bit. Poor Mike got off work and came home to find me sleeping and my mother having taken everything over. He had to take his lunch into the bedroom to watch television for himself and eat in peace. I hate having food in the bedroom, but I obviously understood this time. When I woke up I took each of the whining dogs out and then went to the bedroom myself to feel sorry for my husband who couldn't even relax in his own living room. I told my mom that I was leaving because I had had to go back over to the garage sale. She just said bye from her nest. Mike called an hour or so later to let me know that she had left to go do more shopping and she would be back later. Of course she did come back. Mike was sleeping and she wanted to know if she should stay the night or not. I told her no and she came in and watched about two more hours of my tv before she drove home because we made her leave. It was 8 pm and we had to go check on Mike's grandma because his parents are out of town. We wanted to go earlier but we didn't want to leave my mother alone in our house, plus she had blocked both of our vehicles in the drive way.

I get so frustrated with her. You try to set some boundaries and she disregards them. She is condescending and critical. She doesn't like my husband or my BIL. My husband goes out of the way to say things that he know irritate and by now I don't care. He curses, gets very loud, and uses poor grammar and words she can't stand on purpose. He tells stories that he knows will make her mad. All of these things are on purpose and only fuel why she thinks he isn't good enough for me and why I shouldn' t have children with him. It doesn't drive her away though. It doesn't make her call first. My BIl is very different than my husband. He works too much though and leaves my sister alone too much in their giant house. He does work a lot and he does have to travel a fair amount. However, he provides extremely well for his family and my sister can do whatever she wants. She has been selling ca.bi for a couple years now I think because it is fun for her. She gets to go to meetings twice a year and he takes care of the kids while she is gone. She gets to go back to Texas a couple times a year at least on her own to visit her friends. He does leave for work early everyday before the kids are up so that he can take ever other Friday off to spend with his family. He does do family activities every weekend and many week nights. He does help drive his sons all over the damned city for their activities. He has taken at least one class with each of his sons so they had one on one time together. He is nice to my sister and makes sure that they have time together. He is a bit frugal, but buys her very nice gifts. I don't see how she can not like him and not be happy for her daughter. My BIL made my sister start calling my mom every Sunday about six years ago, even though she doesn't want to because he thinks she should still talk to her mom on a regular basis. They have paid for my mother to come to visit on more than one occasion and she hasn't even said thank you. As a matter of fact she complained about the trip to my nephew who was five at the time, while they were driving to Santa Fe because my mom wanted to go there. This was two weeks after my sister had her youngest. I'm sure the last thing she wanted to do was drive all over to entertain my mother. That is enough gripping, isn't it. She drives us nuts, but she is still here to do it, right and some people don't have that. My sister is lucky that she lives so far away. My mom has to call before she goes to her house.

OB appointment

Well, I went in for my appointment today. Two weeks ago a nurse that I have deal with for work called and said my appointment had to be changed (I'm wondering if I wrote something about this) because my doctor had to help one of his partners in the OR. Okay... She wanted to move my appointment to 1100. That won't work, because that is when I have to be at work and there is no one available to cover for me. I can't stand this woman. She is the one that has to fill out paper work for say, being off work for me and my husband. My husband had to take family medical leave to be off at all. Thank God it exists. I took in the third set of papers for her to fill out for him today, because his work has rejected the last two. We were informed at our first visit by her that "this is what I do everyday, I know how how to fill these out." Mike had tried to explain something to her and got that response. He feels about her the same way I do. So anyway, we will see if the freaking third time is the charm.

So, she tells me she will put me down for a 1015 appointment, and to come in at 0945 and hopefully they can get me seen, but you know how surgery is. Yes, I do know how surgery is. I know that time isn't black and white. I couldn't schedule for another day at that point because I didn't have a work schedule that was completed at that time and they couldn't get me in any other day this week anyway. Next week was actually when my appointment was supposed to be, but my doctor is going to be gone for two weeks. His son that graduated from high school with my husband is graduating from medical school in Chicago and they are moving him to Denver to do his residency. So anyway, I went in thinking I wouldn't even get to see the doctor, but fortunately I was able to see him in a timelier fashion than usual. I begged my coworkers that were in the case he was helping with to do whatever they could to get him the heck out of there. I told them I was impressed.

So back to the important things, the appointment went well. I managed to lose the 0.4 lbs that I gained last month. I still can't believe this. My blood pressure is the same it has been, which is always a little high when I go to their office. We are measuring well and he sounds good. The doctor came in looked at the notes written by the nurse and said "this has sure been a long pregnancy for you hasn't it?" As I am "hopping" up onto the exam table I say "Dr. H, I still have a long time to go." He chuckled and told me I was right. I thought I would be seeing someone in two weeks. At the last appointment we talked about starting every two at thirty, but he said everything was fine and he wanted me to come back in four to see him. That way we are still on the even weeks and I don't see someone else while he is gone. I can tell when I go out to make my next appointment that this is a little unusual, but they always do it. (I mean make all my appointments with just him).

My husband just called. He is on his rest away from home right now. He said he just received a call that he was "bumped." I was confused because he is generally the one that does the bumping. That means that someone has knocked him out of the pool position he is in. To be in a pool means that you have a "job" in a rotation. It makes his going to work a little more predictable if that can be true with the railroad. They also have to go a little less often then the people on the extra board. Those are the people that fill in where ever there are openings in the pool positions. It is tremendously complex and it has taken a bit to grasp all of this. You have to have seniority over someone to be able to bump them out of their pool position. He has enough seniority that there aren't many people that can bump him so I was shocked when he said he was bumped. Two years ago this was a common thing to happen, but not now. He said he was bumped by the railroad when I asked who could have done this to him. He said they called and bumped him to now be an engineer! This is great. This is what all the torture for since last summer has been about. He is nervous because he hasn't driven a train in awhile and now he will have to do it all on his own. I remember how it was when he started as a conductor. He gets really worked up because he wants to do everything perfectly. We want him to do a good job, I mean he IS in a giant coal train speeding down the track, right? He is just meticulous about it when some others might not be so much so. This also puts him back at the bottom of the seniority ladder and that means he will have to work on the extra board and that will suck for awhile. It means he will have less time off in between trips and he won't like that. It will take a lot more time now for him to gain any seniority because there are so many people ahead of him. Oh well, we have nothing but time right?

I can not believe how much Tiger moves now. and how dramatic it is. I love to sit and watch my belly move. It is amazing! He turned some tonight and it was a bit uncomfortable and then he seemed to be "stretching" his arms and legs a lot! I think he is just beating me, but we will call it stretching. Feeling and seeing him move makes this feel so real.

Third trimester!

We have crossed over into the long wait until the end of our lives as we know it. I am scared and excited. I am worried about how much I want it to not be 12 weeks. Yet at the same time I know that Tiger and I really need 12 more weeks.

Lets take inventory.

* The only name my son has is Tiger. My husband still won't seriously talk about it. Okay, I guess I will name him then.

* I now sit in a room that is almost completely cleaned out of my things. (there are still a few like book shelf that I can't move, and two filing cabinets that again I can't move) Those items however, have been gone through and unnecessary items have been purged. Yet this room is still full of shit. I was aware before that most of it wasn't mine, now my husband is. He didn't believe me. I have almost emptied one of the ones in the basement and I have reorganized the other. I have quite a few boxes ready for a garage sale that my friends MIL is having this weekend. Now I just have to get the crap over there in the next two days around work and an appointment.

* I did get my husband to go with me and register at Tar.get yesterday. He goes a little nuts when he gets that gun in his hand. I was comparing two different products and when I turned around he had scanned like 20 things. How many bibs do we need?? Again when I was actually shopping for a curtain rod I heard the gun going off in the distance and he had a sheepish grin on his face. I had to do some deleting on line when I got home after that. He did come up with explanations as to how each of those items could be applied toward the baby. I thought it was pretty creative.

* I am still nauseated almost every damn morning. It is usually better by 8 or 9 on the mornings when I get up by 0530, but not always. I am still am vomiting 2-3 times a week. It is getting really hard to do. It is quite uncomfortable. I really hoped this would be gone but at some point it started getting worse again.

* I am currently undecided on what I am going to do about daycare. I'm not yet changing my plans. I tried to reach my friend last night to ask her the scoop but I couldn't reach her. I still have to find another provider anyway since we are on the waiting list. I have been asking around and have a few names of private providers right now to call. I am mixed about that.

* We still haven't purchased critical items like a car seat or crib, etc. Although we know when we are going to be ordering each of these items.

* I have only slight movements back in my face and it is still inconsistent. It is also very painful. I now get a lot of cramping and spasming. The muscles are extremely tight and it is now more difficult to talk than it was at first. Again, I am told that this is good muscle activity and I just have to wait. Yet all the doctors I work around and that take care of me seem disappointed that I haven't made more progress yet. At this point, I think I would rather have them all touch my belly than ask me to smile at them. I really hate flunking that test.

There is more, I'm sure but that is enough for now right?

Not so long weekend

Thank goodness I got the nice long weekend last weekend because this one won't be. I had a very long day a work today and they were still operating when I left. It was so nice to be able to leave though. I have to work Monday too, but at least then I don't have to eat into my pto's. I just dread what we might have to do...

Less than 90 days! I can't believe I am moving into the third trimester this week. Holy crap do we have a lot to do! The patio furniture I got for Mother's Day has been great because my husband and I will sit out there and talk when it is nice. That means there is no damned television to contend with and we actually communicate. He let me in on his plans for getting things accomplished and it helped me feel better. We also have talked about how we are hoping to work things out as far as his work and having the baby. He is really concerned that I will go into labor when he is on a train, particularly worried that it will be on a train headed away from home. I, on the other hand, am thinking that I probably won't ever go into labor. I have been worried about PIH and preterm labor, but I think when it comes time there will be an induction in our future. I am hoping to convince my doctor of that when he is on call and I am in the 39 week. I worked with him this week and he is can really be a hoot. He said just wait until I am about 38 weeks. He said most of his patients come in loving him and leave hating him because they want to be induced then and he won't do it. I told him that I'm sure I will be feeling that way too since it will be stinking August, but at the same time I need to keep that little guy in there as long as I can to get into daycare.

Speaking of daycare, I heard a couple of unfavorable things about the one I am trying to get into. One of my coworkers wanted to inform me of a few things. Well, I am trying not to get too excited about it but I will have to into it farther. The phrase "consider the source" really comes into play here. However, one of the people she said had an issue is a friend and I am planning on calling her next week to get the scoop.

I'm not sure how to take this. I had a nurse from a sister department ask me this week if I was pregnant. She said "please don't take this the wrong way, but I heard a rumor that you are pregnant. Is that true?" Okay, I am a chubby girl and I do wear nothing but scrubs at work, but am I that fat that you can't clearly tell I am pregnant. I thought the giant boobs, the protruding belly, and the waddle gave it away. I came home and told my husband and he laughed!?! How could he turn that around? He said you would have to be blind not to tell I am pregnant, and that I look wonderful. He better say that hadn't he? A lady that works in the cafeteria was surprised today by my saying something about being pregnant. I have a shelf now where I can rest my tray! I am still about five pounds below where I started, but my tummy sticks out a lot farther or my arms are getting short. I have trouble reaching for things because my belly bumps into something in front of it. I can't judge spaces that I can fit through anymore either. I almost took out a tiny coworker yesterday because I thought I could walk through a passage and I was wrong. She apologized to me like she was in my way. No, no it was my boob and belly that got into her way.

Now on the other side of the coin, this week in particular, coworkers have been touching my belly. Why? Surprising to me, of the six people two of them were men! I wasn't too offended. Most of them were just pats and not rubs but still... I can't imagine just reaching over and patting some one's belly who is standing next to me.

Hmm...

I noticed something last week that is occurring more and more frequently. Something I am totally unaccustomed to. Positive male attention. Men are being unusually nice and helpful towards me. I mean going out of their way, inconveniencing themselves to help me. I'm not sure if I should be happy that they are being so nice to a pregnant woman or I should be mad that this is what it takes for them to be this way. I decided that I will take it for as long as it lasts. It is just not something I am used to. Kind of sad that we aren't nicer to each other all the time.

Where is the manual?

I want to know where the manual to my body is kept. My poor body has had many issues over the years that I have managed to deal with just fine, but now I need a little help. I want specific answers and there aren't any. I can handle just about anything but I just would like to know to prepare myself. I like to be prepared. I like having all my ducks in a row. I know there will always be curve balls in life, but if you prepared for most things you can adapt.

Pregnancy has certainly thrown me for a loop. I haven't been able to prepare for anything. My body keeps throwing me for loops. Now I am just trying to figure out some of the normal changes and I want a manual that will tell me specifically what to plan for. In the very beginning when my breasts were so sore they also ballooned a bit. I ordered some new bras that I wasn't all that impressed with. Well then as I kept losing weight because I was so sick my chest deflated a bit and I have been able to wear my normal bras. It has been apparent to my for some time that I had to get something larger. I have been jamming everything in there and hoping the straps hold for awhile now. I problem is I can't just run to the mall and try on some new ones. One we don't have much along the lines of selection for stores and two I was already at the cut off, for the most part, for what our local stores carry. I suspect the nasty bras in the boxes go larger, but I'm not looking and I would guess that if I could bring myself to bra shopping at Wal.mart they may have some. I'm not saying there is anything wrong with buying your bras there, but those in the larger sizes tend to feel like they are made of canvas or burlap. So thank goodness for the online shopping yet again. But I don't know what to buy. I don't know how big these things are going to get. I want the manual to tell me how large they are going to get so I don't spend a bunch of money now if I am going to keep changing. I am scared to think about what is going to happen when there is nursing involved!

So I have been a DD since right at my 18 birthday. Where is Op.rah when I need her! My bras seem to fit just fine around, right now. I just need larger cups. Or am I wrong? I don't know. Partly out of frustration and partly because I really like this one brand and style of bra that is all I wear. I ordered three bras last week. I got them all the same size around and one cup size larger. There were two different brands in the three bras I ordered. Each of the bras fit differently. I like one and the other bra of the same brand is too small! I don't get it. The third one has a funky back and silicone on the straps that I don't really like. I kept the bra I didn't like very well that I ordered last time and that was a waste so I think I will send this one back. But I don't know what to do. I need to have more than one bra that actually fits, but how long will I be able to wear it? I looked at many that cost more than the ones I ordered, but these still cost $35-40 a piece. I don't think that is unreasonable but I know many women that laugh at that because they can buy fashionable bras instead of industrial. I think I will order another one exactly like the one I like. I have always worn white because it is the closest to my pasty white skin and it wasn't available in white so you can see the tan through the white shirt I am wearing today. Oh well. The other thing is that the sizes confuse me. I was hoping to never go over a DD because after that I get lost. There are DDD, DDDD, E, EE, F, and so on? Aren't some of these the same? I don't know. I need a manual. These bras are scary! I can't believe how big the cups and wires are and then to put them on and they fit. I am officially afraid of my own breasts! I am afraid to see how big they will get and then because what goes up must come down, I am afraid to see what they will end up looking like. If the manual could only prepare me!

The things I worry about... at least nothing else on me has fallen apart... yet.

Another work week over!!

I woke my husband this morning with my retching. He hates it when I do that. How does he think I feel about it? At least it isn't every morning. He got mad because he could hear a dog on the floor in the bathroom. We want to keep them, more specifically their claws, off the new floor. I thought it better to have the dog in there with me than urinating on everything in the house while I couldn't do anything about it. Mike said I should have gotten him up. I told him I was a little busy at the moment.

My body won't let me sleep in at all. I marked some garage sales in the paper yesterday and I had decided that maybe I wouldn't go to them. However, it was apparently 0617 when I so rudely brought my husband to semi consciousness. I was dressed and had one dog walked by then. I figured I might as well go to the sales I had marked. I stopped at a few extras, but it took me almost no time at all. I spent a 75 cents and that just didn't satisfy my need for shopping. I was out looking for things for Tiger of course. So I headed over to Tar.get. Apparently it has never been an issue to me the opening time of the store before. I was there too early with twenty minutes to spare. I already stopped to get gas before heading that way. Holy cow, $3.35 a gallon! That is horrible. I thought it is ridiculous for me to drive all over town for nothing at that price. I decided to wash my car and then I thought maybe I didn't need to go look for something for Tiger. I did decide to stop at home.depot and look at the plants, just in case there was something I couldn't live without. I was still hoping for a few perennials for the from of the house. I got one larger plant and started home.

At the last second I turned and headed back toward Tar.get. I needed to look at the baby stuff while things were pretty quiet. I still haven't been able to get my husband out there to figure out what we need and get registered. I have bought many, many baby gifts now by my age, but when I was looking for myself it was very overwhelming. There is so much STUFF! What do you really need? How many of each of those things do you need? Which brand? What size? Good heavens it is scary. I was looking at diaper bags and there are so many different shapes and sizes. I keep asking my sister questions and I think she thinks I am trying to get her to give me her leftovers. She keeps telling me that she got rid of already and so forth. I am just trying to seek advice. I am glad that there are so many mothers of young toddlers and babies at work now. I keep asking them about bottles and diapers and this brand and that style. I think they all laugh at me. I just want to know if they have some lesson they have learned that I can benefit from without having to do it the hard way. Plus I really hate wasting money.

Diapers! I could tell you all the different name brands before this morning. I didn't know there were so many different varieties within each name brand. People haven't been telling me what variety they recommend, just the name brand. To be so overwhelmed and exhausted before 0930 in the morning. I did buy the crib set that I have had my eye on. Of course, since I was going because I wanted to buy something for Tiger I forgot the curtain rod that we desperately need for our bathroom and now I will have to go back. Did I say before that my husband suggested that I use clothe diapers? First, I told him that he too would be changing diapers and that clothe diapers weren't going to be working out for our lives. It is nice in theory but not very practical.

I am been in a bad mood all week. I needed to talk to my boss about a few things and I did that on Monday. Everything was going very well until the last thing I had to discuss. All of the first things I talked about were entirely work related. The last was about me. I told her my concerns about my being able to take call and she got freaking nasty. I mean nasty. She apparently doesn't remember anything about the last few employees that have been pregnant, she only remembers the ones back in the olden days. She said that "we" schedule women on call until they are in their last month and then they are usually too large to be able to move around very well. Okay, lady. I am telling you I am not moving around very well on these cases now. Second of all, I made the schedule for four years which included the time that the last two women on my schedule were pregnant. Now, they both had hyperemesis, but they were done taking call before they were 10 weeks. Both of them were off for awhile and they both came back, one of them back to full time and they didn't have to take any call. My boss is so stinking bipolar. She isn't of course, but it seems like it. I was supposed to drive across the entire state with her (just the two of us) on Monday and then back again on Tuesday, but sadly our trip got cancelled. I was not looking forward to it. I am still mad at her and she was nasty to me all week until Friday. She is a terrible driver and she was supposed to drive. My plan was to offer to drive so she could read. She is the only person in our department that is allowed to live more than 20 minutes from the hospital and she does. She is the only one that is allowed to call in because of the weather. Seems fair, huh? She lives on a farm about 60 miles away and we are all worried about her making the trip everyday because we all know what a truly horrible driver she is. Anyone at work who has ever ridden with her was terrified and fears for others when they hear they have to ride with her. I think I was more worried about the time spent with her than the driving since I am still mad. She isn't good with people.

I had three appointments that I canceled to go on this trip. Tuesday is my regular day off so I had made a perm appointment, an appointment with the daycare that I still don't know if I have a slot in or not, and a massage. I had to find someone to work for me on Monday and I explained to her what happened and said I would be happy to work again, but she said she would still be glad to work if I wanted to the day off. Let me think, YES!! Now I get a four day weekend! That is good because I have to work next Sat and I am the lucky one on Memorial Day as well. I was able to get a haircut appointment, and I couldn't get the director of the daycare on Friday but I will talk to her on Monday. I just hope it doesn't come off as flaky by canceling and then rescheduling. I just need to take my pathetic face down there and plead my case. I will have that spot!!!

I had numerous difficulties at work this week. It seemed like things weren't working in my favor. A piece of medical equipment that we needed got "lost" by one of the shipping companies. It had been overnighted to us and they couldn't even track it. It came a day late. But I had been able to work everything out for the surgery, but I don't know how many people where like concrete boots to my progress. It seemed to continue all week.

The good new is that the slight movements I had in my face are a little bit stronger. I have tremendous amount of ground to cover before it is even close to normal. With a lot of effort I can move the area round my dimple and over to the edge of my lip. A couple of times, I have had enough strength that the outer edge of the top of my lip moved. Yesterday, I was even able to see that the skin on the left side of my chin was moving when I was trying to move the area around my dimple. There hasn't been any further improvement in my nose. But in the last day or so it does feel like I have more muscle tone in my cheek and jaw and both my upper an lower lips on the left. I'll take the whole shitty week for those improvements. I never would have imagined how happy seeing something move just a millimeter would make me feel. The sense of accomplishment it would give me.

Speaking of accomplishments, here is the start I have on Tiger's baby blanket. It isn't too far along yet but it is getting there. I haven't crocheted anything in a really long time because I was having problems with my wrists and then I learned to knit. I have made about 30 afghans in my life and only two of them did I knit. It is faster for me to knit and it took me a bit to retrain myself to crochet, but since that is what I have done for most of them that is what I wanted for my baby. There were a couple of yarns that I had bought years ago that I had stashed away for myself "someday." This is one of them. I still love the yarn, but I feel a little bad because I have gotten used to using a different, better quality of yarn. I feel bad that I made so many blankets not knowing better and I still love the green, blue, turquoise, and lavender variegation. So, I will just have to wash it softer! I am a little over a quarter of the way finished according to the pattern. Sometimes I make them longer. I have enough yarn, but I don't know about time or if I am going to be able to tolerate handling the blanket in the summer heat as it gets bigger!

100 days left, 100 posts

I made it through yesterday. It wasn't too bad except my mother always manages to piss me off. My husband was wonderful but... I went in the bedroom to get some clothes and he woke up and sang to me and immediately asked me what I wanted for my birthday. I have been very specifically telling him things that I would really like for the last month! He hadn't bought anything except for the chocolate cake that I practically threatened his life over. He was so sweet, he asked if I was surprised that he got me the cake. I looked at him like he was nuts because I thought I made it very clear that he WOULD have chocolate cake for my birthday. He gave me money to buy a ridiculously expensive pair of flip flops that I want. I went to the store in town that I really thought was going to have them last week and I was going to have them set the shoes aside and then just send him in there to get them. I was disappointed that they didn't have them. Oh well, at least there is on-line shopping to save the day again!

My husband took me out to dinner and then my mom showed up shortly after we ordered so dinner wasn't as nice as it was going to be, but we all made it through alive. With my mom, that can be quite and accomplishment. She is really something else and I just have to try to ignore her. I tell my aunt things and I tell her that I don't want to tell my mom and then the next thing I know my mom is saying "so, someone told me..." I guess I can't tell my aunt anymore. I really don't think that my aunt is trying to go against my wishes I just think that she forgets she isn't supposed to tell. I really think that she has early dementia and you never know what she is going to remember or forget. She is supposed to see a doctor but she has to travel quite aways to do it so it just hasn't been convenient. The earlier you get the medicine the better the chance of it helping!!!

I didn't know if my husband would do anything for me for Mother's Day or not since I'm still a mom-to-be. I was tickled to find out that he got me a card. Cards are very special for him to get. He rarely gets me a card for an anniversary, Valentine's or birthday. I got both a birthday and Mother's Day card this year. We are going to go pick out some chairs for our patio now. We don't have room for a table but he said he would get me some chairs so we can sit out there together. I was so tickled with this card. He teases me because I have the tendency to come home and take off my pants and wonder around the house for awhile before I put on some shorts or more comfortable pants. I have done this for quite some time but it is worse now that I am wearing support hose. He has teased me about how I won't be able to do this once we have kids. Friday he was really hot and I kept telling him to just take off his pants and sit in his boxes. The card is just perfect.

We are going over to the in laws to eat. This will be the first time I have gone over there since we had our little issue. Both of Mike's grandmas will be there so hopefully that will help. I don't know, I don't really want to go. It was REALLY hard this year trying to buy cards for both our moms. I don't know why there aren't any that say "Happy Mother's Day, leave us the hell alone"

Progress

Today is my birthday. I am 31. Birthdays have been hard for me since I was a teen. I don't particularly like them but this one isn't too bad except that I am really now in my 30s. Last year I refused to agree that I was in my 30s because I was just 30. Some sort of denial I know, but it worked for a whole year.

This week has been hard and I'm sure my yearly birthday depression hasn't helped. I had an 18 hour day the day after I told my doctor I didn't think I do this much longer. Then next day I was the charge nurse at work. I was way too tired. I don't work as the charge nurse very often and it was a difficult schedule to have to run. I was thankful that one of the people that came in on a later shift was someone that works charge much more often than me and she relieved me so I could go home about 1330. I would have really liked to have gone home before that with only 4 hours of sleep the night before, but it wasn't possible. I was a nut the whole rest of the day. I cried for at least two hours that night. I was upset with my husband. I have addressed an issue I have with him a number of times over the past few years. He doesn't get it. It really bothers me that he will stay home with me until after dinner and then go to his parents house or visit a friend for a couple of hours. He does this almost all the evenings he is home. I want to spend time with him. Thursday night is the one night I want to watch TV so it isn't a bad night for him to be gone. I just hate it that he does this. I think he should spend time at home. I know he really is where he says he is, but still. The thing I really don't want is for him to leave all the time when he has his own family. I say that I am his family already and that doesn't hold enough weight, but he is gone so much and I want him to spend time with his child. I don't know but this is something that really bothers me. I try to tell him and he doesn't get it. It wouldn't bother me as much if he went earlier but he doesn't. I am almost always in bed by the time he gets home. I really like to talk to him before I go to bed. Anyway, that had me crying for two hours and I couldn't sleep. He yelled at me about it too.

I wanted to share something with him Thursday night, but he wasn't there. If he had been at work it would have been one thing, but instead I just felt abandoned. I know I am difficult to be around and I know he does need time for himself, but I need him too. He was home by himself all day. Anyway, I was able to move just a bit of my face. I have had a twitch where the dimple in my cheek is for the last week and I was actually able to move that area plus a little bit more around it that night. That was the first progress I have seen. But not only did I have some control there, but I have some muscle tone back in my nose. It isn't completely restored, but breathing is better. Now when I breathe through my nose you can actually see the left side moving. It is greatly diminished compared to the right, but it is better than nothing like it was before. The ENT stopped by to see me at work that morning and told me that I probably wasn't going to get my face back 100%. She talked to me about my visit with the specialist. She was concerned about the lack of change and atrophy to the nerve. That didn't help my day or my mood. She also told me that I needed to avoid all stress. I see that happening about quarter after never! So anyway it was encouraging to see a change after I talked to her.

Friday when I woke up all I had was the twitch in the dimple, but that didn't surprise me at all. I already knew that things would come and go and that it is actually better towards the end of the day than at the beginning. I worked with the ENT yesterday and told her and she was really pleased with that.

I had a little accident yesterday though. The charge nurse yesterday asked me to do this departmental safety check paper work. We know that we will have a visit anytime from Joint Commission and so we are trying to do all the things we need to do to be ready. We are never ready, but generally do pretty well. This is a HUGE deal. So I was going over this check list and I had to make sure that all the outlets within 36" of a sink had the GFI whatever. Well, there was one that was really close to 36". I didn't want to measure it unless until I checked the outlet and if it didn't have the shut off then I would measure the distance. I had to unplug a couple of things to see the outlet. One of the items was a phone charger (that shouldn't have been there) and it covered the outlet enough I couldn't see it. It is exactly like mine and the prongs flip flat. I tried to plug it back in and the prongs flipped in. I tried again and got a little electrocution. The current ran up my arm and down the right side of my body and out my right foot. It hurt. I felt weird, but okay right after it happened but I was worried about Tiger. I called my doctor's office and they wanted me to come over right away and they would see me. Right away, turned into about an hour wait. I was in the waiting room and I did have a nurse check on me about every fifteen minutes but I was still concerned. I didn't feel him move that entire time.

She looked me over and listened to Tiger's heartbeat. It was a little slower than it usually is but it was still normal. I kind of thought she would do an ultrasound to make sure the placenta and everything else were fine too, but she didn't. I hadn't had any contractions or bleeding and she didn't think it was necessary, but she was worried about me and sent me over to ER to be check out. I certainly was off. I don't know how to explain it. My thoughts were behind and kind of foggy. I felt twitchy all over and only felt better if I could pace around. I couldn't do that in the ER of course because they wanted me hooked up to a heart monitor. They drew a ton of blood and wanted to make sure my muscles weren't breaking down a lot, and that my kidneys were functioning alright because I would have some release of myoglobin from my muscles. The extremely handsome doctor kept assuring me that because of my age and that I'm pretty healthy 110 electricity probably wouldn't hurt me much, except that I would be sore for a couple of days. He is right my hand is still tingling today and very heavy and sore. Only I could do this. My husband flipped out. I didn't get him called until I was in the ER and they had done an initial work up on me. He had been helping one of his friends get set up for his son's graduation from high school today. They had finished and where having a couple of beers. Great! My giant husband doesn't drink often and "a couple" of beers is about all he can handle. He didn't tell me that he had been drinking when I talked to him on the phone and I could see it in his eyes immediately when he got there. It turns out that "a couple" was in fact four in about two hours and that is way too much for him to drive. I was just horrified. Now here I am in the ER all wired up and my husband is drunk. Great. A drunk in the ER is never a good thing. We were there quite awhile still and he managed to behave himself. My blood pressure went up after he got there. I was now worried about what stupid thing he might do. He managed to sober up a bit and most people probably wouldn't have known, I hope, since they are trained to notice these things. I was so embarrassed and worried.

Lets hope today goes better. However, my mother will be showing up at some point...

I neglected to say that he finally went to work! Had I not had a doctor appointment I would have seen him before he left, but I missed him by about half an hour. That's fine, because he finally went to work!! I has been nice having my husband around when you would expect a spouse to be there, but he so needed to go back to work.

25 Weeks

Twenty five weeks. Wow. I has been so fast and yet the longest time of my life. I know another fifteen weeks will go quickly and still feel like an eternity. Make sense? If you are reading this it probably does. One hundred and five days to go to hit the magic 40w. I have almost broken the 100 day marker. I have so much to do still.

My mom is going to be so disappointed. I passed my glucose tolerance test just fine. Who has a mother crazy enough to wish gestational diabetes on their child??? Apparently me. I already told my sister that if for some reason I did end up with it that we would have to LIE to our mother. Thank God I have a sister to share this crazy mother with. If I didn't have her to vent to I don't know what I would do. She is the only person who truly understands. My aunt is close, but not quite the same. My aunt is the only person who can tell my mother to pull her head out of her ass and get away with it.

I was disappointed with my OB visit. I didn't feel like they were listening to me today. I think I was needier than they were expecting. This crap with my face has really taken an emotional toll on me along with the pregnancy hormones. I would really like to just hide in a hole for awhile and only come out when I want to. Well, that isn't going to happen! My doctor wouldn't write me a note not to have call anymore. I couldn't believe it. He wanted to write a note that limits the number of hours I work. He knows there is no one on Earth that has any control over what happens on any given day when you are on call. We know some of us are shit magnets. I said what am I supposed to do after 12 hours say sorry I know I'm on call but you are going to have to call someone else. That won't fly. It is all or nothing. That means I am going to have to talk to my boss because I really think I have some very valid concerns about my abilities and emergency situations. It is about me, but I am worried about the patient that I need to be caring for. I don't want to end up as the patient when I am trying to take care of someone else. I have seen that happen and it doesn't work well.

I gained a whopping 0.4 lbs from my appointment at 21 weeks. At least it was a gain I guess. I know the week after my face went out that I did lose because I didn't know what to eat, my jaw hurt so bad, and I couldn't drink well. The nurse harped on me about getting enough fluids. I really don't think she believes me about how much I drink. I was at their office for 1 hour. I went twice while I was there and then again when I was on my way out. Does that sound dehydrated??? No.

I now have a mattress and mattress covers for the baby. I didn't order the crib when told it was excluded from the free shipping offer I had because the shipping was half the cost of the darn crib. I figured it could wait until next month when we are back to having two regular incomes. I also ordered a changing table because the free shipping did apply. I made a decision on a stroller and I think my sister is going to very generously buy it for my birthday. I guess I will find out soon. She called and talked to my husband for awhile before he gave me the phone. He brought me the phone and then walked away from me into the house but not far enough for me to not over hear most of what he was saying. I might be wrong, but it was the same day she helped me pick it out. She actually got to go to a store and got to put her hands on it. There was the added bonus that my nephew tried it out and liked it. That didn't even occur to me. Some how I am doubting that my child will be able to last in this stroller as long as my nephew but he has been the biggest of her kids. He is a little more than three and half and weighs the same as her six year old. I still have a long way to go, but at least I am started. I have been working on cleaning out the office too. My silly husband seems to think that we will be able to keep the computer in here with the baby. I think he is funny. I did find someone having a garage sale that I can contribute to. It is June 1st and I am glad because my husband can't put it off helping me for long! Crap, I was going to go help first thing in the morning, but that is when they made my next OB appointment. Oh well, I guess. I don't think she was expecting my help. Anyway... must seek food.

Monday, Monday

This morning didn't start well, but other than that I am doing better. I got up a little earlier than usual because I fell asleep last night before 2100 and didn't get my lunch made. I went through my normal routine of going to the bathroom, opening the kennel door for the cat, opening the kennel door for Sparky and getting his leash on and we headed for the back door and I stepped in water. Our house is so crappy our kitchen isn't plumbed for a dishwasher and so we have one of the portable ones you hook up to the sink. Well, the drain backed up and flooded the damn kitchen. Dirty water every where. (I found out last night my husband poured at least of cup of fat from meat down the damn drain. Gee, wonder what happened there). I dropped the leash to get some towels to at least get a path through with the dog. In the mean time, Sparky decides he doesn't want to wait and pees on the water cooler. With my super sense of smell I immediately noticed and yelled at him. I got a path mopped up and took him out. I was really mad by then. Got him in and had to dry up the whole kitchen and clean the carpet while he ate. Then I had to take the next dog out. Darn good thing I got up early!!! I wretched my guts out in the shower and I had to wake my snarly husband up to take me to work because the battery was dead in my car. (I told him Thursday I thought my batter was about dead).

Luckily, the day got better from there. Since I didn't work Friday I didn't know my assignment for the day. Had I known I would have worried about it, but everything went just fine and we had HOURS of down time. I am better than most people about finding things to do so we were fine. My car is all better now. I called my husband and he said, now listen to this, "YOU WERE RIGHT. IT WAS YOUR BATTERY." I even made him repeat it. He messed with my car for hours yesterday (avoiding the few little things he needed to still do in the bathroom) and still wasn't convinced it was my battery until he woke me up a little after nine to tell me to go to bed. Even still he didn't know how bad it was. The battery was factory so it lasted a really long time since my car is a 2002. It fell apart as he was taking it out of the car. I was worried about him, but he said he was fine. He said battery acid went all over and when I got home I could see that it had. He had cleaner all over the place for it. It literally came apart in pieces and he showed me. I am thinking we shouldn't be messing with this or breathing anywhere near it, but what do I know. I was still told that I was right and I'm not the one that is the mechanic. (He gave me a whole list of other things it could be when I said I thought my battery was going dead, but again I was still right).

He was a major crab this weekend and was just nasty to be around. He greeted me Saturday morning by saying what the fuck are you doing. Nice! Love you too honey. He wouldn't go shopping with me when I needed help and then got mad at me when I came home and wasn't feeling well at all. He was cranky because his vacation was almost over and he didn't think he got to do anything he wanted. He thought the only thing he did was work in the bathroom. I didn't tell him that if he had really WORKED on the bathroom he would have had it done before the first week was over. I am smart enough to know better. He would have had it done had he really wanted to in three days probably. My in laws came over last night for a few minutes to look at the bathroom and my MIL was decent, almost nice. I think it is the first time she has been in my house since July. I'm not sad about that. We will see if that changes with the baby. I am not always going to drag my child and all of the stuff that must accompany him to go over to Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Discouraged

Today has been rough. I am just so tired still from the weekend. I found out that I am supposed to be on call Memorial day as my holiday this year. I didn't know that and I worked it last year. I guess I took it for someone else when I was trying to make extra money. I don't know what I am going to about it yet. Maybe my doctor won't give me an option. I was going to ask him to write me a note that said no call with out another RN assisting until the end of May's schedule and then no call at all after that. Our schedule for May that is out ends on the Sunday before Memorial Day. I feel bad but at the same time I am concerned about my health and my ability to do the job in an emergency situation. I am nearing the end of orienting this new person. I need to visit with my bosses about if she needs to be with me at all on the next schedule or if she is ready to be free. At this point I am certainly more concerned about me than I am her. I think she will be fine, I don't know if I will be able to do everything with out her help at this point in time.

We worked with the ENT doctor again today and she wasn't happy that there is no change in my face. There is a specialist that she trained under that comes every three months and sees patients one day and does surgery the next. He happens to be here right now and had office today (actually in her practice). She got me squeezed into his schedule and I actually saw him outside the OR for once. He tried to be encouraging but in the end he really couldn't be. He got to see me when my eye is not working at its best and now he wants me to wear this horrible little shield as soon as someone can find one for me. The nurse was sick today and I am pretty sure their office has them or someone else in town does. I have seen them on patients before and I know that the doctors there are the ones that make them wear them. They are awful but it keeps the eye moist and protected. I won't wear it all the time even if he thinks I should but I guess I will consider it when my eye is tired like now. He said I have a classic case of Bell's Palsy, but is concerned that I haven't seen any improvement. Then he started talking about nerve studies and percentages of loss, MRIs, CTs and surgery and it all started to be more than I could handle. So I cried and cried. I have to have my hearing tested. He has to look into whether I can get the kind of study I need done here or not. I know I can get some studies done that the ENTs want but I don't know if this test is more special or not. I said I should start to see improvement in 3-5 more weeks and in most people it should be mostly better in 3-6 months. If I weren't pregnant he said he would encourage me to have surgery. They would do a nerve graft and it would be my best chance at having the most complete recovery. This is more than I can handle. I have been crying for about an hour and a half now and my husband doesn't do all that well with crying. He had a bad day himself and now he thinks I need to scrap everything I have done and just go to his chiropractor because he will cure me. If only it were that simple...

The week drags on

I can't seem to get my energy caught up from working the weekend. I am so looking forward to a three day weekend this weekend. I just have to make it through tomorrow and it is going to be busy. I have 14 cases tomorrow. Most of them are short which is both good and bad. I still have the same things I need to do just in a shorter amount of time. It is good since there are so many. The last one is on the same trauma patient I took care of Friday and Sunday. That surgery will take a number of hours, but hopefully I will be gone by then because it isn't scheduled to start until after my shift normally ends.

The floor is down in my bathroom. It isn't quite what I hoped for but it is there. I had the understanding that the baseboards would be finished today and the floor would be sealed around the tub but that isn't true at this time. I guess his vacation isn't quite over. He is certainly pacing himself!

Mike got to feel the baby move for the first time the night before last. Tiger is usually very active as I am trying to go to sleep. Mike actually came to bed the same time I did and I thought I would give it a shot to see if he could feel it. When I put my hand on my belly I don't think I feel it from the outside but he could. His little eyes twinkled and he got so excited. Of course, when he first put his hand on my belly Tiger stopped. He was patient longer than I thought he would be and finally felt him move quite a bit. Then he turned to me and asked me if I wanted to have sex. I asked him why feeling his son move for the first time made him want sex. He didn't have a good answer for that.

I need to go walk my poor Molly. Our walks have been getting shorter and shorter. I am so tired when I get home from walking around at work so much I don't want to go for a walk at all. Poor girl, it is only going to get worse.