So, here’s how it started. I started by taking Langston over to the Staybridge Suites to pick up Tricia (who is visiting from Chicago and works for our PR agency, Peppercom. I have worked with her for the nearly 8 years I’ve been at Steelcase, so she is a friend as well as a “colleague.” She always wants to check in with Langston, so I thought this was a good opportunity to have her see him but not do anything too prolonged where I might worry that Langston will puke on her, or start screaming, or similarly embarrass me.) We got there a little early so I took Langston in and we checked out the hotel together. Langston was totally jazzed by this. He could wander up and down the long hallways…only occasionally trying to knock on a random room door or steal the USA Today from the front of another…and then going “boneless” when I tried to steer him back to the lobby. Good times.It’s a pretty nice hotel. We checked out the breakfast bar (tasty!) and the TV room (comfy!) and the library (plants! chairs!) while Langton squealed with delight at each new thing.
Tricia found us and after hugs and squeezes, we all headed out to drop Langston at daycare on the way to our morning PR meetings.
After all the excitement, Langston wasn’t so excited to go into his classroom. He didn’t cry…just the boneless treatment again…this is becoming a nasty habit.
We visited the Learning Center breakfast bar (blueberry bagel…and donut “nub” – if you just hack off a bite, does it really count? - …and glass of ice water…ever since I became pregnant I crave ice water…seems very strange to me, but I guess I’ll just go with it) and then the meetings began. We are spending a couple of days meeting with all the product groups, service groups, design teams, research teams, etc. to find out what will be going on in the next year that will require PR. Without my blueberry bagel to comfort me it would have been a pretty long morning I tell ya.
And then our meetings were over and it was lunch time! Yay…it’s chili Thursday at the Learning Center!!
After lunch, Tricia headed for the airport and I headed for the doctor’s office. It was my first real appointment of my pregnancy…two weeks ago I met with the nurse, but that’s just for health history, blood work, etc.
So, the first thing I had to do was get weighed. Of course. Blech. It has been a tough first tri-mester…where basically the only thing that kept my nausea at bay was, curiously, eating, so I was fearing the worst. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it might be. Turns out I am 10 pounds heavier than I was before getting pregnant with Langston. So, not great…but not to despair levels yet. There’s plenty of time for that. Especially since I spied my records and I could clearly read the notes made during my previous pregnancy “watch weight gain.” Sigh.
Then the nurse took my bp and the doctor came in. First of all, he says, what’s up with my high bp? Oh good grief, are you kidding me??? I don’t know if you remember last pregnancy, but my last tri-mester I got this insane bp that resulted in me having to spend 3 weeks on bed rest, having an oxygen mask on me during my whole labor, and having to “push” while laying on my left side…and after all that having to have a c-section anyway. Good times. Anywho, two weeks ago when I met with the nurse my bp was perfect – 120/70…today, it was over 140. Eek!!! Yeah, the doctor was concerned that with my previous history and that it has gotten this elevated prior to 20 weeks…well, they are going to have to monitor it very closely. But, there’s not really anything I can do to stop it. It’s gestational hypertension and I’m hoping it was just an aberration and that it will be normal at my next visit.
Next he tells me that I now have some new antigen in my blood that I didn’t have at my pre-Langston blood tests. This means that I got it from either a) being a prostitute or b) getting a blood transfusion. Since I could honestly rule out a), that means that the transfusions I got after Langston’s botched c-section came with a little something extra. He was going to do some additional research on this “E-antigen” but it seems like it’s something similar to having negative blood when the baby has positive blood. The danger lies in my and baby’s blood crossing…I would view the baby as an invader and start attacking it. Again, it looks like it’s just something they are going to have to monitor with a bunch of blood tests throughout the pregnancy to keep track of the levels.
It seems like my body does a bait and switch with me…on the one hand it can’t wait to get pregnant but then as soon as I do, it starts making things as miserable as possible.
Oh well. At least none of this appears to mean much risk to the baby, so that’s a good thing. Mom will just have to be tough. And complain a lot. And require more than the average dose of chocolate…and pity.
I also got to see the baby since I looked to be “higher” than seemed right for my current due date – he thought I might be further along than they originally thought. So, they pulled out the ultrasound machine to measure the baby. Hey! There’s really a baby in there! And, thank you Lord, just one! But there it was just breathing and heart beating and floating around…hard to believe that he/she is only a few inches big at this point. He wanted to measure the “head to rump” distance but, as he is not a professional tech, was having a little difficulty being totally confident he had found the rump…so, he took the measurement several times just to account for his “fudge factor” and, I’m actually right where they thought I was…about 14 weeks. The real ultrasound will be at about 20 weeks…so in about 6 weeks I hope to know if we are having a boy or a girl. When I told Jeff about it he asked if they could tell the sex yet…I said, Jeff, the man wasn’t sure he could find the butt…I doubt he could hone in on the various pieces and parts J
Back to work. Nothing happened. I got scheduled for a 4:45 conference call on our aviation department…web surfed while “listening” in on this riveting conversation. Then headed home.
Fabulous microwave dinner followed…lasagna and garlic toast…hey, I got home late, sue me!
After dinner Langston got a bath (which he LOVES) and then ran around the kitchen in his pajamas…literally in circles…he was reminding me of a dog chasing its tail. He was holding on to a favorite truck, running in circles until dizziness forced a fall, then some wailing, then back up again to repeat the whole thing. It was hilarious. He is in a phase where the more tired he gets the punchier he becomes. By the time our Bible study people showed up he was dancing around the living room laughing maniacally. Of course he cried when I put him to bed. But only for a few seconds…then his eyes lost their focus and he practically fell asleep in front of my eyes.
Bible study pooped me out. Long day, I guess. The apple cinnamon bread Mike brought was yummy. Took the plates in to the kitchen. Washed my new “old fashioned hot dog roller grill.”
I bought this on a whim for something I wanted to do for Jeff…I was trying to be a good wife and give him some extra TLC (I think the last few months have been hard on him too). I know that he is bummed that he is not going to make it to Spring Training to watch a Dodger’s game their final spring training at Vero Beach (before they move to Arizona) this year. So, I thought that on the date of the final game at Vero Beach I would try to create a “baseball experience” to commemorate it. So I bought this grill thing. But now it looks like that will fall through anyway…so, I had decided to take it to work for Friday’s (today’s) summer themed potluck. (Can I say that the thing worked like a charm? Very fun. The roller things worked, the hotdogs were great, the aroma of sizzling hotdogs filled the office. What could be better?)And then off to bed. Boy, sleeping sure feels good. I could just do it for hours.
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