Anxiety or love?

Is there even a difference between anxiety and love? I mean, I wouldn't feel anxious about having a child if I didn't love it, right? And I wouldn't love it if I didn't worry about it, right?

But this is a different anxiety than I've ever felt, and a different love. (I know that I can't possibly feel anything even close to the love I'll feel once I have the child in my arms, so don't get me wrong.) I love Mike, but I don't have an anxious feeling about his safety or his happiness at all times. With the baby, it's not even a feeling of anxiety about safety or happiness, it's just anxiety in general. It's anxiety about feeding it and clothing it and bathing it and keeping it from crying and perhaps most importantly, making it sleep!! Perhaps I'm confusing this anxiety about its wellbeing with actual anxiety about my life sucking for the next year or so. Perhaps I love this baby despite my anxiety, not because of it. (Er, I mean, uh, my anxiety isn't proof of loving it. My anxiety is hopefully just keeping my head out of the clouds.)

I am anxious that it will cry a lot, and that it will make me cry a lot, and that I will be sitting in bed, crying and paralyzed with fatigue for days on end. I don't function well when I don't sleep, and I haven't been sleeping well for a week or two, and I know that this is nothing compared with what lies ahead. This leads to perhaps my very very very biggest worry. I'm afraid that our baby won't sleep. See, I was a good baby. I was a sleepy baby. I liked to sleep, and I wasn't a scheduled baby. I just slept when I was tired. I would sit on the living room floor, looking at books or dressing a doll, and when the mood struck, I would just grab a pillow off the couch, curl up in a ball, and close my eyes.... and sleep. And according to my mom, if it was in the evening, she could pick me up and dump me in the crib or in a bed, and I'd stay there, lost in sweet dreams, until morning. (Come to think of it, not much has changed in the last 25 years.) Mike was a devil baby. (This is what I hear at least. I need more details.) But rumor has it that as a child, he did not sleep. He would stay up all hours of the night, and when finally exhausted and miserable but still refusing to sleep, he would have to be locked in his room and he would bang on the door screaming and crying for hours, until eventually he passed out on the floor next to the door. Is this characterization possibly true?? And if so, what if my child has his genes?!?!?

And this leads us to my more abstract and irrational fear (the sleeping thing is a very real problem, and therefore a rational fear.) But I'm afraid that, well, what if this baby isn't a good one? I mean, what if this baby sucks? What if it isn't cuddly, and it doesn't sleep, and it doesn't love me, and it doesn't do cute things? What if it doesn't latch on and nurse? What if it cries when it's held? What if it does nothing but shit these monster shits and have blowouts in the crib, on our bed, on the couch, wherever I set it down??? And then, the bigger worries: what if when it turns 13 it puts on a spiked dog collar, shaves its head and puts a padlock on its bedroom door? What if she sneaks and buys slutty clothes that she hides in her backpack and changes into in the bathrooms when she gets to school? What if he gets a classmate pregnant at age 14? What if she hates me and won't speak to me? What if he does drugs and fails classes in high school? What if she goes vegan and wears nothing but hippie skirts and refuses to wash her hair for a year? Or worse, what if he votes Republican?! (Joke; sorry, I had to.)

But I suppose these fears will never go away. Perhaps you have to trust the genes we brought to the table. Perhaps you have to trust that we will provide a supportive and loving environment that won't push our kids to the edge. Perhaps it's a little bit of, or a lot of, both. But we all know families who are good, and go to church, and the mom makes chocolate chip cookies before the kids get home from school and organizes bake sales, and the dad coaches little league and organizes car washes, and they still have kids who do drugs, drop out of school, even commit suicide. How powerless all parents must feel. And how dumb the others must be to not sometimes feel powerless. Maybe it's the ones who never question these things that are most surprised when little Bobby goes off the deep end.

Anyhow, I just want our baby to be a good one. We should be finding out in less than 7 weeks!!!

Nursery near completion!!

Check it out! The night sky is finished. In hindsight, I think we didn't plan it extremely well. Okay, okay, I didn't plan it extremely well. Mike just made me tell him where to hammer in the stars. But I realized that we should have made it so that more bigger stars are near the bottom molding and more smaller stars are near the top molding, so that it would give it some perspective. You know, so the stars nearer the "horizon" looked bigger, and the ones further away looked smaller. But whatever.

Also, you'll notice that the crib is put together!!! Now we just need a mattress so I can put a sheet on it and pretend I already have the baby. I have been practicing lowering the side of the crib one-handed as quietly as possible. Mike thinks I'm crazy. My mom doesn't want me starting with this "quiet" nonsense. (Oh, so my mom and I actually agree on this: babies tolerate noise as much as you allow them, and they learn to require quiet as much as you allow them. That is, if you allow them sleep in the bustling activity of the day, they will, just as they have done for the last 9 months in utero. If you always put them to sleep in a darkened, quiet room, they will need that, and will lose the ability to sleep through noise. So I hope to have the baby passed out wherever we are, and I'll just toss it on a blanket on the floor or something when it falls asleep [at first I mean, of course, when it's still immobile]. But, I also can remember some older babies that I babysat who were just hellish to get to sleep. And once you get the cretin to sleep, the tiniest noise will disrupt the sleep, and then you have a horrible, horrible, horrible crying baby who doesn't want to go to sleep all over again. So I know someday, sometime, I will need to open the crib without disturbing the baby.)

Anyhow, Here's another full shot of the crib. The cats have left it alone, because as you can see, they would fall through the springs if they tried to get in. They are dumb cats, but they're not that dumb. So the sooner we get a mattress in there and scare the shit out of them (therefore keeping them from every trying to get in it again), the better. I read that you can put a bunch of mini blown-up balloons in the crib, and if they jump in and land in that mess, it'll really upset them. Mike prefers the duct-tape method, which is laying cardboard or something with backwards duct tape all over it in the crib, and once a cat lands on duct tape, they're adequately traumatized to not let it happen again. We'll see. Anyhow, isn't the crib just beautiful?? I am so thankful to my old boss for donating it to us. But it turns out that getting a dresser to go with the set is probably going to cost far more than a quality crib would cost. But, if we were buying our old crib and recycling our old bedroom furniture, we'd have very nasty cardboard quality KMart furniture in there, and this way will be higher quality. Oh, hell, why don't we just buy one more KMart dresser to go with this set?? Who cares if we have to throw it away in 2 years? It'll cost like $50, and the kid will be scribbling on furniture with crayons when I'm not looking by then anyhow!

Sigh. We'll see. Oh, and yes, the window desperately needs something. I'm not sure what yet, but it'll probably get a roller shade for room darkening, and then just a plain valence. Knowing me, it'll be a white valence.

I suck at blogging

So, I have been thinking about blogging a lot. Sometimes I think that I should be sure to include some interesting posts that are not baby related or pregnancy related, so that, well, you know, I'm an interesting person and stuff like that. I mean, I really don't want to become one of those mothers who is incapable of talking about anything other than what little Junior did today or what kind of poop or cough he has or what I did buy or have to buy for him..... and I don't think I will.

But in the meantime, I'm slowly realizing that this is MY space, and I can talk about whatever I want, and I'll never have this time back, and if I want to go on and on and on about being pregnant, so be it. I was worrying myself into thinking that I should be writing for someone else's pleasure or entertainment, but phooey on that. I'm writing for me, and for my baby. Maybe when our baby is 13 years old, or 18 years old, or when she becomes a mother, she'll want to know what I felt when I carried her. She'll want to know what I hoped for, what I was afraid of, and God knows I'll want her to know what agony she caused me, and what sacrifices we made. (Okay, okay, so we really haven't made any sacrifices yet. But we will. I'm sure of it.)

And I was thinking then about how when I started, I wrote some very important stuff about whether I felt connected to our baby, and how I felt about it, and what made me worry. And now I've wasted several months not recording my feelings, and I already regret it. I don't want to miss the last 2 months. So I am going to write about how I feel. But I will separate the posts, for ease of retrieval when I need to see how I was feeling.

Back to blogging

Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year. We survived the holidays, and are lazily getting back to normal. We registered for baby, which was a very big and very stressful job to get out of the way. It's very sobering to see how much stuff we'll need to buy for ourselves. I know that it's time to figure out what we can do without, and what we can scrimp and save on. We are so lucky that Becca has given us some stuff to use, including a co-sleeper (worth at least $100), a front carrier (worth $80), and probably like 10 outfits, several of which are 0-3 months and will suffice for the first few weeks, and the rest of which are 3-6 months, and will probably last through June or so. I'm sure we'll end up with many more clothing items as gifts, but I'm hoping we get more t-shirts and socks and such than cute little sailor outfits!! And I read that if you're willing to do laundry every day (and what else is there to do when you have to sit at home alone all day?), you can get by with only like 6 outfits. I'm sure it'd be nice to have more like 12 or 18 outfits, but I think we'll survive on that front. It's when it's 6 months old, and then a year old, and so on that I'm worried about. We'll need a new car seat, a new stroller, new clothes, new diapers, new toys.... Oh well.

I have to do work now (my job has been busier, leaving me less anxious and more excited about leaving for a long break soon), but I have much to post. I haven't been journaling well, and it's high time I started recording my thoughts, as much for myself as for the baby.

[Written 12/20]
I got my RHOgam shot. I am not a happy camper about it for the following reasons:

1) They said when I called they could see me right then, and it was only 10:45, and I didn’t have anything until 1:00.
2) When I got there, I sat in the waiting room for a half hour.
3) Someone finally called for me and said I had to go downstairs and have blood work done in the hospital lab, and bring back the printout of the results with me.
4) It took a half hour to have two more vials of blood taken from me in the lab (recall that I gave blood last week for the glucose test and a few weeks before that for the liver tests).
5) After they took my blood in the lab, she said, “we can’t give printouts of the results, it goes to the blood bank. We don’t process the blood. Your doctor knows that. It usually takes about an hour to get results.” [Translation: It'll be at least 2 hours.]
6) I used relaxation breathing to keep from crying on the way back up to the doctor’s office. It worked, mostly.
7) I waited about 15 more minutes in the doctor’s office waiting room, and was ready to leave, when I was called back.
8) I was basically told, “Oops!!!!!! You already had this blood drawn, so you didn’t need to do that, so we can go ahead and give the shot. Sorry ‘bout that.”
9) The shot was in my butt cheek.
10) I will probably get billed a copay for having the blood drawn. I am not going to pay it, and the nurse said she’d check with the office manager how they can handle that so I don’t have to pay it.
11) My butt hurts.
12) I got back in the office at 12:39 or so, so I have 20 minutes to eat, and then it’s back to work.
13) I’m hungry and thirsty.
14) My butt hurts.

[Update 12/21]
My butt did stop hurting a short while later. I'm still mad that she stuck a needle in my flabby butt and then put a big ugly bandaid on it.

Sadness reigns in

We have been dealing lately with some family and friend problems which seem to affect us more now that we have a baby coming into the world, then it did when we weren't expecting. Well here is the jist.

To start matters off, my mother called Saturday evening to inform me that she took my father to the emergency room because he felt as though his heart was going to pop out of his chest. Upon taking his pulse and blood pressure (nurse mom), she diagnosed my dad at having a heart rate of 220 bpm and a blood pressure of 190/110. Now that is not normal. By the time he had gotten to the emergency room his heart had slowed somewhat and now that he is on medication upon his release from the hostipal, he is doing well. Scare one.

In between scare one and worry two we have Alisha (a pharm-D and my sister-in-law) speaking to Sabrina about the risk factors of my father (slightly obese) and my father-in-law (drinks and smokes). According to Sabrina, she would have assumed that obesity is a higher risk factor than someone who smokes and drinks, well it turns out that someone who smokes and drinks is 10% (or maybe it was 20%, I can't quite be exact) higher to have a heart attack than some one who is obese.

My father-in-law, who likes to drink and smoke, partly for fun, but mostly for pain relief has always worried Sabrina and I because what if he isn't around when our children grow older due to his habits. Worry two.

Scare three and the topper. I received a phone call from Sabrina's friend Missy, telling us that Sabrina and Missy's old college roommate, Julie, that her father had passed away. Now her father as of a year ago was health and normal. He had started to have pain in his joints around a year ago, but did say anything to anyone because he thought it was nothing until about two months ago he broke a bone and upon going to the hosiptal, doctor's had discovered cancer in his joints. The doctor's could not operate, but said that radiation and medication would hopefully help the situation. He was not feeling well on Saturday morning, the family took him to the hospital and he passed away Tuesday morning, with his family at his side. He was only 49...

Understanding that death is part of life and so if bringing a child into this world, but we keep going over and over and over the same situation, why are we deciding to have children in a world where a father at the age of 49 passes away. One can argue that why do children get gunned down in streets and countless innocent people are killed everyday across our hate filled world, but a death where the miracles of modern medicine or the decisions people make could not prevent. It is a sad and scary thought.

We just hope that our parents get to live long enough to see our children grow up, that is the point I am trying to get at. Will they make it that long, we hope so!!!! We hope there isn't an unexpected sadness in our family, like that which happened to Julie. Our thoughts and prayers are with her and her family in a hard time of morning.

Doctor appointment

I had my 28-week appointment this morning (even though I'm really 27 1/2 weeks done). We are getting near the end!! They want to see me in one week to get my RhoGAM shot. For those who don't know, I need this because I have Rh- blood and Mike has Rh+. So there is an Rh antigen on Mike's blood cells that my body would recognize as a foreign body, and attack. And our baby could be Rh- or + since it will have inherited blood type from both of us (and other relatives, of course.) So if the baby is Rh+, it's okay for now; its blood doesn't really mix with mine, and so my body won't attack (that is, build an antibody against this foreign antigen.) But, during childbirth, the baby's blood will mix with my blood (this is still not clear to me, but I imagine it has something to do with it squeezing through my bloody, torn vagina, and it's not pleasant to think about). Once our bloods mix, my body would recognize this foreign antigen, and begin producing antibodies that will attack. By the time my body is cranking out the antibody, the baby will long be out, so the antibodies can't hurt the baby. But, and this is what's important, if a subsequent baby was conceived and had Rh+ blood, the antibody now present in my blood would cross the placenta and attack the baby's blood cells, which needless to say would not be good for that baby. I think this was a major problem in the past, and it caused a lot of miscarriages and such. Now that they know about it, they can prevent it from happening. So I need this shot. I don't know how it works, but I suspect it stops my body from producing an antibody if the baby does have Rh+ blood. I can't imagine why else I would have to have it before delivering the first.

Anyhow, there you have it, our first Littlest Lesh physiology lesson.

And then after the appointment next week, he wants to see me 2 weeks later, or 3 weeks from now. That'll be in the middle of my 30th week, and then after that the appointments are every other week. Eek!

And the baby is just fine. He found the heartbeat with a little more trouble than previous appointments--when he first stuck the doppler-probe-thingy-ma-jigger on my belly, the little bugger (baby, not doctor) kicked it. And then it apparently squirmed around and wouldn't give a good heart rate reading. But it settled. And then I asked the doctor if he could tell which way the baby was facing, and should it be head down by now? Is it important? And of course, the baby is presently breech. But he said it's totally fine until the 35th week or so, at which time we'll want to make sure it's head down. But it was funny that he claimed he could feel the head, and he cupped his hands around where it is, and it's pretty much standing up in there, and I was all, "No wonder it feels like someone is dancing on my cervix!" Seriously, I've been complaining to Mike that it's kicking my bladder, what must be my cervix, and my lower colon a lot, and not to be too callous, but it makes me feel like I have to poop. It sucks. I hope it flips over before it gets any better at stomping.

Oh, and we start Lamaze classes in late January. I'm excited.

Fun links, part deux

Again, you need to have volume turned up. This one was pretty popular a month or two ago, and I think it was even on the Today Show or something like that. But it's definitely worth watching. They make me like the Backstreet Boys. I never realized how good that song is!!

The Christmas Spirit

I am going to try something new. I find all kinds of crap on the web that is linked on my favorite sites, and I always want to pass them on to people, but I don't know who. So I will start linking them here! I also don't want to steal someone else's thunder by pretending that it was my discovery, so I will tell you who I got it from (but not also link to that page.) A lot of my stuff will come from the Buzz List, which can be found here. It is updated twice a week, and as best I can tell, there is no way to access old lists, so I couldn't link to that page even if I wanted to. Does that make sense?

Today's fun link was brought to us by Steve at theSneeze.com, which is one of my favorite links over in the right margin. You must have your speakers turned up, or if you're at work, use headphones. There is no sense in looking if you don't have sound. You also have to scroll down the page a bit, past the stupid ads. Merry Christmas, and enjoy!

Complaints and the complaining complainers who make them

Sorry for the abrupt ending to the post [below.] I started writing it two mornings ago when I wanted to die, and didn't want to come in to work. I worked on it for the first two hours of my morning, and then ran out of time, so figured I'd come back to finish the bitchfest.

So I tried today. And my heart's just not in it. I just don't feel like bitching today! I had such grand plans for that post, and it would end with an exhaustive list of my symptoms and a plea for a diagnosis (other than psychosis.) But these things must come and go, because I can't recall what sucked so badly all last week and this weekend. I do remember becoming concerned about my perpetually bloody nose (not actually like a nosebleed, but lovely red strings of blood throughout all the snot when blowing my nose--this went on for more than a week before I decided to be concerned), my unpleasant and anything-but-regular bowel, and increasing sciatica causing me to stumble every now and again. So I worried about high blood pressure causing the apparent nasal equivalent of hemorrhoids, but I checked and I was fine (perhaps too low, in fact, at 95/70). I worried about my bowels, whether this would be the last straw to start the real hemorrhoid parade, but it hasn't happened! And I decided that the sciatica is fine. It's an annoyance, for sure, but compared to the neurological problems my sister dealt with in pregnancy, I can handle some tingling and weakness. It's like a gentle reminder to sit the hell down and take a break.

Speaking of, I think this is my biggest problem. I just don't like being a weakling. A sissy. A big sit-on-my-ass-so-I-don't-overexert-myself baby. But I talked to my mom about it, and it turns out that I'm just like her and my grandmother (poor Mike), and so if I don't want to turn out like them (requiring multiple knee replacements like my grandmother or having brittle bones and likely osteoporosis at 50 like my mother or peeing my pants several times a day like both of them), then I have to take it easy when my body says to, and I have to take all my calcium supplements even when it's hard to remember.

I think the peeing my pants thing is a lost cause. That's okay. Mike has cleaned up my pee more times than I'd like to admit already, and we've got a lot of golden years ahead of us. I love you, dear!!