Nesting

It looks like I can add yet another thing to my list of things people weren't kidding about in pregnancy: nesting.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am NOT a neat freak, especially with two cats and living in a basement. I tend to go through fits, generally before holidays, where I want everything spotless and in total order, but I can also live with some clutter. Part of that is because we're packrats and like our knickknacks. Most of it now is because we have 2.75 people living here and 0 storage. And, well, we're still packrats.

I woke up at 8am on Saturday morning, though, with a whole to do list in my head of WHAT MUST BE DONE! and they were all baby things. I needed to do them like I generally need to pee: urgently. Up until recently, I've had no motivation to really do anything regarding Hieronymus's nursery area. Some of that has to do with the fact that Project Fail 2010 isn't actually finished, so anything put together would have to be moved and part of it is that I still feel kind of crappy.

Help you say? I'm very helpful.

But no. I urgently NEEDED to get things ready for the baby. As it turns out, my nesting instinct is pretty intrinsically linked to my crafting instinct and not so much connected to my cleaning instinct. Rather than cleaning everything, I sanded down the changing table my father built for her, sketched out a piece of wall art for her room, and sorted all her baby clothes. Again. Yesterday and today, I've been painting the changing table in fits and starts since, well, I am pretty largely pregnant and I also have a lot of help.

We're painting it Moonlight Waltz, from Behr's Disney collection. Right there, I'm sure that's at least some sign of the coming apocalypse. I know we're having a girl, but I swore up and down that I would not buy into the Disney Princess craze. I'm not really against Disney, I grew up with it, but I don't especially care for the whole Princess marketing thing. It figures, though, that they would have just the right shade of pale violet, a shade brighter than what my BFF Martha had in Wisteria.

I did finally finish painting most of the table, by the way. I just waited until my cats were napping elsewhere and painted very, very fast, starting with any and all flat surfaces. When Vlad finally realized how left out of the process he was and jumped up, the top was nearly dry.

I also ordered felt to make Hieronymus a fat little bird mobile since I am not actually willing to spend money on something I can make on my own. As it turns out, no one carries craft felt these days. Sure, you can find projects to make with craft felt, but actually getting it in your hands? Good luck. There was nothing in any of the craft stores I went to. I finally bought some off of fabric.com, which coincidentally has some fantastic fabric. If only my sewing machine worked or wasn't hidden in the crawlspace, life would be good. Or if I had unlimited funds. That might also be good.

In non-nesting news, I rolled into the third trimester last week and we celebrated it by spending four hours in Labour & Delivery because I am lucky enough to have back spasms. After a long, miserable night of being woken up in PAIN!!!! every 45 minutes, I phoned my OB's office because, in so much as they generally just tell me to suck it up and deal, I like them to know exactly how miserable I am.

They finally called back while I was in the middle of Target and I told them what was going on: I was having back spasms. How do I know this? Because I have had them in my upper-mid back before and, while I don't know what labour feels like, I do know what these are like. But no, they wanted me to head over to L&D because it could be pre-eclampsia! I'm not sure how mid-back muscle pain translates to that, but hey, what do I know.

Apparently, enough, because the intake nurse also looked at me like I had three heads when I explained why I was there. On my call ahead sheet, the office had indicated LOWER back pain. Here I am, trying to explain that no, seriously, my lower back feels pretty good, it's the area right at my bra line that hurts. Nope, no where near my kidneys, no trouble peeing, and my blood pressure was good. Probably back spasms and, oh wait, that's exactly what I said.

Better still is after that, the poor nurse couldn't find Hieronymus's heartbeat. She went through three dopplers trying to locate it. We could see her moving in there (princess does not like doppler, ultrasound, etc), but she could not find the heartbeat. I suggested she check on the upper right side, since that's generally where I feel her gigantic head. Ta da! Heartbeat, loud and clear.

Had you been told she was breech, the nurse asked me.

No, but now I have another thing I can worry about! It had never occurred to me why I was feeling her head under my ribs til it was mentioned. I have an ultrasound this week, so I guess I shall ask about it then. As far as I know, she's always been heads up like this, and that's why we've seen so much of her bum at appointments. It could be worse, I suppose.

Four hours later, we were finally discharged with a prescription for muscle relaxants. Low and behold, they've worked pretty well. Obviously, enough that I've indulged in painting. As of tomorrow, we're down to 10 weeks left. It feels like we were just at 10 weeks along and I was switching OBs. It's gone by very fast.

That was ...fun...

We made our first trip to Labour & Delivery last night. This isn't the first scare we've obviously had with the pregnancy, but most of them have managed to be during daylight, office hours.

It's been approximately 11 million degrees up until yesterday and Hieronymus, like she does randomly, was not terribly active yesterday after a very busy couple days. I started feeling lousy in the afternoon and developed diarrhea shortly after 9. This, of course, had some very exciting cramping involved because, duh, diarrhea and by 1, when it had not abated, even after drinking more water and laying down, I turned to my friend, Dr. Google.

Honestly, here's some advice: Don't google things at 1 in the morning. You will be sorry. You'll probably be sorry you googled things at any point, but especially in the middle of the night.

Dr. Google tells me PRETERM LABOUR!!! I'm at risk for that with the placenta previa anyway, so I do what any woman having her first baby would do and panic. I wake Steven up. We call the afterhours line at my OB's office.

To their credit, they called back. I missed the call because I was pooping and no one could get to the phone quick enough. I was told 20 minutes, so honestly I didn't think to take the phone with me since I was panicking.

Here is where I am less than pleased: no one from my doctor's office was on call. I get a very terse message from the on-call doctor telling me she doesn't know what she's going to do for me with diarrhea AT TWO IN THE MORNING, but *sigh* if I still think it's an emergency to call back.

When I called, I told the answering service all my pertinent information, including the previa. I also mentioned that this was not just a little soft poop, it had been going on for several hours, tried laying down and drinking, and had decreased fetal movement. Maybe this didn't get passed on, but you know what? You're an OB and you're on call. It's been hot as hell. You should expect nervous calls from pregnant women and not be frakking bitchy about it. Trust me, it disturbed MY sleep too.

I called back, was told the same thing about getting a call in 20 minutes. Half an hour later, nothing, so Steven calls and is told that someone went into labour and they'll call back when they call back. We debate for a couple minutes and decide to just go to Women and Infants. We got settled in, hooked up to a monitor for contractions, and waited.

Hieronymus is fine. She spent the whole time we were hooked up kicking at the monitors. Typical kid, shows up once she realizes she's in trouble. She looked fine on the ultrasound, even if she is still bum to the wind and hid her face the whole time. She is still definitely a girl.  What was actually happening was a crummy intestinal bug that they've see a lot of women coming in with, since it mimics some of the preterm labour symptoms, a baby who was chilling out low, behind the placenta, hence why I felt her less, and her kicking the same few spots, which is like poking a bruise. We left there at 5am.

I'm glad I'm home and I'm glad it turned out to be nothing, even if I am kind of pissed at the on call doctor.