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September 27, 2004
A Bad Cold, Blood Pressure Woes and the Dreaded "Crap Bag"
September 27, 2004
24 Weeks, 4 Days
God, I am so bad at writing in this journal, it is not even funny. It’s been a rough two weeks and I have just been trying to keep my head above water. First of all, Cameron missed his first week and a half of preschool because he caught a really bad cold and cough – his nose was constantly running and when he coughed it sounded like barking so I took him the pediatrician who told me that (shocker) he has a cold and cough, and there is basically nothing we can do except wait it out. I figured, why bother sending him to school and infecting all the other kids, when he will be out of sorts and not into the whole thing anyway? So, he stayed home though I must admit, I was rather bummed out about it, more for him than anything else. But more on that later…
First, about the pregnancy to date – I feel pretty good, just tired as hell. What’s so funny to me is I will say to Charles how I am experiencing this or that with this pg and how it is so different from my pg with Cam. He will almost always tell me how I DID have that same symptom with Cam and I just don’t remember it. Example: I was commenting on how sometimes the baby kicks and I can feel the kicks very low, sort of like he is kicking on the outside of me, if you get my drift. Charles swears if I go read Cam’s pg diary, that I will see how often I complained about that same symptom. I honestly don’t remember that one bit. I am positive of one thing though and that is, this baby DEFINITELY kicks way more than Cam ever did. Sometimes I can barely get to sleep because I can feel his little kicks as they drum through my stomach wall and pound on the mattress, if I am lying on my side, of course. I can see most of the kicks as well, which I find adorable. I have to say, I am getting SO excited about this little boy, I am so anxious to meet him.
One thing that is very hard and that I never anticipated would be as hard as it is, is taking care of a toddler while being pg. Oh man…don’t get me wrong, Cam’s a good kid and fun to be around (most of the time) but sometimes I can’t believe I signed up for this again and so soon. I know, that just sounds horrible but all I mean is that it’s hard dividing attention equally even before the baby is born, let alone after. I feel like I never devote enough time to this pg, like I did with Cam. I hardly even get the chance to even REMEMBER I am pg, let alone think about it. And then because I am so tired, I feel like I am gypping Cam out of quality time with his mommy. I never seem to have enough energy for him any more and that makes me feel so GUILTY. I guess I am just so much more tired than I remember being when pg with Cam and the heat of the summer, that’s a whole other ball of wax. What the HELL was I thinking wishing for a summer pg??? Was I high? Clearly, I was. This heat sucks ass, is all I can say. I cannot wait for 0 degree weather, as if we ever get that here. (We don’t). The heat gives me migraines and makes me swell and just makes me sluggish in general. I always though the summer maternity clothes would be so much cuter than winter ones but what I am finding is that when you are tall and big like I am, summer maternity tops are even shorter on your torso than winter ones and in reality, nothing looks good. Anyway, as I was saying, the fatigue is what’s getting to me and turns out, there is a reason for that, again, which I will touch upon in a minute. But the thing is, Cameron now wants me to carry him everywhere and to pick him up constantly and I feel so bad for him because normally I indulge him whenever he wants because I love it but in this past month, his weight + my continuous weight gain has really been difficult to deal with. I never knew carrying a 26 pound child up the stairs while being 6 months pg could be so hard, but it is.
Side note: When I took Cam to the pediatrician for his cold, they weighed him, fully clothed with heavy sneakers on and he weighed 26 lbs. At his 2 year check up with no clothes he weighed nearly 30 lbs so he has lost weight it seems. The pediatrician says Cam is very healthy and that this weight loss is just because he eats less and is more active during the summer. Let’s hope she’s right.
Ok – so on to why I am so tired. Well, I finally had my monthly OB appt. (Friday, 9/24), and was scared shitless that I would have gained even more weight and that my doctors would have a conniption over it. I was so stressed out about it that I just dreaded going to my appt. When I got there, first thing they did was take my B/P and right after that weighed me in. I had been instructed to wear the same clothes I wore to my last appt. so that the clothes would weigh the same, except this time, I stripped off even my watch and my necklace, that’s how petrified I was of even one extra gram of weight being added to my cow-like sum. Imagine my glee when I was told I had lost 4 lbs in the last month. I have to say I was not surprised, I mean, after all, I worked my ass off (literally) for that 4 extra pounds. I ate a lot of salads with grilled chicken, a lot of spinach, drank a ton of water and walked a lot. It killed me but I did it. And besides, eating only 1800 calories a day, I figured I had to lose something but I wasn’t sure. Anyway, I was happy. After the weigh-in, I had my exam by Dr. J., the other OB in my practice who is supposedly the true stickler for pg weight gain. This woman is about my height (5’10), and is a complete rail and had twins and only gained 35 lbs. Please. So I knew she was not going to be sympathetic to my plight if I was too heavy. Surprisingly though, she told me my weight gain was great, that she couldn’t believe I had lost 4 lbs. and asked me how I did it. I told her that Dr. S. told me I was gaining too much and put me on this 1800 calorie a day diet, and he had also told me he was scheduling me for an appt. with her (Dr. J.) who was a complete hellion when it came to gaining weight. So, knowing all this, I tried really hard to lose so that no one would yell at me at my next appt. Dr. J. was flabbergasted and couldn’t believe that I had been that scared over my weight gain, she told me I was doing so well and jokingly said that she was going “to kill him,” (Dr. S.) for trying to give her that sort of a reputation! So, all in all, I felt a lot better. Anyway, after the weight discussion was over, Dr. J. measured my stomach and said that this week, the baby is measuring right on target as opposed to last month when he was measuring ahead. After that was done and we listened to the heartbeat (155 BPM), Dr. J. said the only thing that was concerning her was my high BP, (particularly since I have lower than normal BP when not pg). What? When the hell did that happen? It was low last time, how could it have gone up and after having lost weight? Dr. J. said that sometimes it happens, and for no apparent reason. And she also pointed out that it happened in my last pg as well, which clearly I hadn’t forgotten but at least it was at the very end, not anywhere near this early. So, Dr. J. suggested we take my BP again after the appt. was done just in case it was high due to my worrying about my impending weigh-in. I thought to myself, yes, that is what it has to be, my nerves raised my BP. So, the nurse took it again while everyone stood around and watched (it was a Friday and a slow day in the office) and what do you think the reading was? Lower? No – of course not, that is not my sort of luck. No, instead my reading was even HIGHER than when I first came in – lovely! So, my doctor is concerned, is starting to talk about bedrest (as if) and is making me come back on Monday (today, 9/27) to take my BP again and then to decide what to do from there. Of course, I am nervous about it all because I simply cannot afford to be on bedrest right now, I have to take care of Cam, take him to school, take him to speech therapy, deal with the house, deal with God knows what like everyone on this planet does, and simply CANNOT STAY IN BED. Wish me luck on that one.
Anyway, it appears that this is why I am so tired, apparently you are more fatigued when your BP is up. No wonder – I mean, I know you are tired when pg but I feel overly exhausted and from doing nothing more than up keeping a house and taking care of a 2 year old which women have been doing for centuries and with no problem at all. I feel like such a failure, in a way, that I can’t even handle this little bit that I have been given to deal with without my body falling apart. It’s just a pg and a two year old, after all, not a terminal illness and wild animal.
I can’t wait to get started on the baby’s room and on Cam’s new room. I am sick to death of Cam’s room looking like an infant’s room when he so clearly is not an infant anymore. We plan on repainting both Cam’s new room (currently a guest room) and what will be the baby’s room (currently Cam’s room). Right now, Cam’s room-to-be is red and we plan on repainting it the same color, but with a shinier finish instead of the flat one we chose when we moved in. Live and learn, you know? The baby’s room which is currently periwinkle blue will be painted yellow, the color we had chosen even if this baby had been a girl. Basically, we are keeping most stuff the same, as far as the little doodad type decorative items and pictures because some are just too baby-ish for a boy’s room, but in addition to changing the paint color, we do plan on changing the entire bedding set and moving the glider into Cam’s room (since the room is red and the glider is blue) and getting an new glider for the baby’s room, (same one but in a tomato red color). Normally we wouldn’t spend the money on a new glider when we already have one but Charles is getting a really good deal on one from his store and we can’t pass it up. Even if we don’t truly need it, it’s nice to have because who knows when we will have a bigger house later on and really enjoy it or need it – the deal is so good we’d be kicking ourselves later for passing it up, so though we don’t really have the space, we will squeeze it all in somehow. We also plan to take the area rug from Cam’s old room and move it into his new one and then just get a new rug for the baby’s room. Curtains and finials will all remain the same.
Cam’s new room is the one we are having a tough time making a decision about. First off, do we want one twin bed or two? A double bed is nice in theory (because it makes for a nice extra bed if you have guests) but I really like the look of twin beds in a child’s room, plus since we already have an additional guest room, we don’t truly need a double bed for guests in Cam’s room, since we hardly ever have two sets of couples visiting us at the same time. So, we have pretty much resolved ourselves to the twin bed solution (since I think Cameron would kill himself with bunkbeds), but not as to whether we need one or two. Then, once we decide about the beds, we have to decide, do we want a night stand and dresser or two dressers (of different sizes) and no night stand? We know we don’t want a desk, first of all, there is no room and second, by the time Cameron actually needs a desk for homework and stuff, we won’t be living in this house, so why clutter up his space with furniture he won’t need (especially since we are already cluttering it up with a glider he won’t use)? I do love decorating so much, so I look forward to this entire project but I would like to hurry and have it all done so I am not worrying about it right before the baby is born. We would have already started on it all but Charles’ relatives are coming for a week long visit in mid October and because it’s (actually) two couples coming, we need that extra guest room for right now, so Charles promised me he would be able to get it all done in two weeks before the end of November. To that I say – ha! Yeah, right, I’ll believe it when I see it.
Ok – on to Cam and preschool – his first day was Tuesday, (9/21). In every class at the school, there’s the actual preschool teacher, and then there’s an aide to help the teacher with the various tasks, such as clean-up, handing out of materials, and responding to the children’s various needs (bathroom breaks, nose-wiping, shoe-tying, etc.) and then in this class, there is also Cameron’s personal hard of hearing teacher. His HOH teacher doesn’t have anything to do with the other kids, she is there solely for Cameron’s benefit and to basically stand right behind him and narrate every thing that’s going on, example: “Cameron – are you playing with the BLUE play-doh? Is that a picture of a dog on the wall? Are you painting a picture of a house with RED paint? It’s story time now, let’s put the toys away…” – that sort of thing. The actual preschool teacher, Ms. Carolyn, is the one who wears the microphone that pumps the sound directly into Cameron’s hearing aids so that he can hear every word she says perfectly, even if he is at one end of the room and she is at the other. THE HOH hearing teacher is always right on his ear so she doesn’t need the microphone. This room is really huge and the acoustics are just horrible, even I have a hard time hearing Miss Carolyn between the squawking of the children, the air conditioner unit (did I mention this school is quite old? Rustic and nice, but old…), and just the general din that is associated with a preschool. I feel like I need hearing aids in that class. Anyway, with all these extra accommodations being made (the personal teacher and the microphone), I feel Cameron is getting great services during his two hour day and hopefully we should make some progress quickly. Anyway, back to the first day, I thought he might freak out if I left, so I stayed the entire time, as did a lot of the other mothers. Cameron was absolutely fine with everything as long as I was right there with him. He played with all the other kids, played with the toys, did arts and crafts and really seemed to enjoy it all. The two hours is basically broken down into different activities – first 15 minutes is play time, the kids get to play with the tons of toys that are scattered about the entire room. The next 15 minutes is usually arts and crafts where they do things like paint or work with clay or glue and paste, the usual stuff. After that, 15 minutes is designated to snack time, where Cam will mostly watch the other kids eat and suck on the occasional goldfish cracker or pretzel. After snack time, it’s recess for 20 minutes, which Cam loves of course. After recess, it’s more play time, accompanied by story time. And that basically takes care of the entire two hours. Of course to me, it seemed endless because I was forever trying to squeeze my fat ass onto a teeny weeny chair, or trying to heave my fat gut up from the floor, or trying to be accommodating and tending to all the kids’ needs, like blowing noses, opening juice boxes or fetching requested items. Let me just tell you, by the end of that two hours I was exhausted. Not to mention, that for an hour and a half before class even starts, I sit with Cam and his speech therapy teacher for an hour and a half while he has his session. So between coming and going and therapy and class, I was up and down and running around for over four hours. Let me just say I have a newfound respect for preschool teachers – these people work their asses off and don’t get any respect or paid very well for the abuse that is heaped upon them. I witnessed kids hitting and kicking the teachers and the aids and basically just being awful. All I can say is that I couldn’t do this work. I won’t tolerate my own kid hitting me, so clearly, being struck by a child I don’t even know ain’t gonna happen.
The one area where I was truly petrified was with respect to the potty training. I took my chances and threw a pull up on Cameron right before class started and he didn’t have an accident, thank goodness. I kept asking him if he had to go potty and he just shook his head “no,” which I am sure just meant for me to go away, and not that he truly didn’t have to go. “Luckily” for me, two other little boys pooped in their pants during the class and were actually wearing diapers, so I felt a lot less worried that they might kick Cam out if he should one day have an accident, which let’s face it, he will. I was just happy he wasn’t the first one to do it, or the only one. Naturally, all the little girls are completely potty trained, isn’t that just typical – I swear, mothers of girls have it so much easier in that respect.
The second day, (Thursday, 9/23), I made the decision that this time I was going to leave Cameron in the class by himself. I wasn’t going to leave the building, just the class room and would watch through the tiny window in the door to see if he was OK. I stayed for about the first 15 minutes of class and Cameron was once again, having a great time, playing with the other kids and was completely absorbed with all the games and toys in the room. Cameron’s HOH teacher then signaled me to leave him but she has previously warned me that it is very important to say good-bye to your child and not just sneak off because when they realize you are gone, they get upset and then won’t trust you in the future. I definitely understand that logic but I do think every kid is different and personally feel Cam would be better if I just snuck off but oh well, I’d do it her way for the first try. So, I said “Bye-bye honey, Mommy will be back really soon, I love you!” Well naturally, you know what happened next – he freaked the hell out, basically went apeshit and had a total meltdown. I started to plop right back down on the carpet and the teacher told me to just go anyway, he would be fine. So, I left a screaming, flailing Cameron in the arms of two teachers as I plodded down the hallway to the “girl’s room,” at the very opposite end of the school, where I sat on a toilet sized for a Lilliputian, and tried not to cry as I could still hear Cameron screaming even 300 feet away. After leaving the bathroom, I went back to the classroom and stood outside in the hallway to listen and peek through the tiny window on the classroom door. Cam was still crying. Not screaming at this point, but crying and looking miserable. I decided I would wait just a minute longer and then I was going in but the teachers caught my eye through the window and waved me away even more. So, I waited another 2 or 3 minutes until I didn’t hear any more sniveling and I took another peek. When I looked in I saw a laughing, smiling Cameron, happily painting a picture on a big easel, clearly in his glory. He looked so happy and I felt SO much better. I was definitely glad at that point that I hadn’t gone back in the room. The problem now was, what do I do with myself now for the next hour and 45 minutes? We live about 7 miles from the school (which is sort of out in the country, if you want to call it that) and the nearest shopping center is also about 7 miles away. Now I know 7 miles is not that far but I was afraid that Cameron might get upset again at any moment and then I wouldn’t be near enough to get there quickly, should he need me. So, as there was nowhere to sit in the school and nowhere to go and because I had left my novel at home on the kitchen table in a rush to get out the door, I was left with no option but to go to my car and stay there where at least I could blast the A/C (as it was 90 degrees out that day). I had previously told Cam’s teacher I would be in my car if they needed me. Bored out of my skull, I watched a movie from Cam’s collection, the most entertaining choice (out of Elmo, Baby Einstein and Sesame Street videos was a lone “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” which somehow made it into the car at one point. So I watched that for the next hour and a half, while sipping on water and dozing in and out of consciousness every ten minutes. Between the heat and the fatigue and the boredom and the hunger (I was starving at that point), I was more exhausted than I had ever remembered being in this entire pg. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, the hour and a half was up and I sleepily made my way to the classroom to collect Cameron. When I arrived, he was happy as a lark, showed no signs of trauma and the teacher said he was so good and so well-behaved and how much he enjoyed the class. I was so relieved to hear this, you have no idea. When we left the class, Cameron showed me his painting and then ran up to Miss Carolyn to give her a big hug and kiss, so I guess he must have truly enjoyed himself. His next class is this Tuesday and I plan to completely leave the premises this time and just be accessible by cell phone so I can easily come back if necessary. Hopefully, Tuesday will go as well as last Thursday did.
Cameron is definitely becoming so clingy to both Charles and myself. He is constantly asking to be picked up, and though he has always been very affectionate, even he has kicked it up a notch recently. He will often hug us without letting go for five minutes, and he will often attach himself to a body part and refuse to let go. I would have to say he is way more attached to me and intolerant of me leaving his sight than he is Charles, but even with Charles, Cameron has his moments of attachment these days. Just this morning, Charles left for work as he always does and instead of Cameron’s habitual “good-bye daddy!” and a kiss, he screamed bloody murder as Charles headed for the front door. He had an absolute fit and ran to the living room window to watch Charles leave and never stopped screaming, even after Charles was long gone. Even though I tried to comfort Cam and pick him up and remove him from the room, he had a fit and glued himself to that window, so I just decided to let him cry it out and get over it in his own way. Getting over it in his own way meant crying so hysterically to the point where he threw up his entire breakfast all over himself, all over the carpet, and all over and through the window (which was open to the screen). There was puke everywhere, in the living room, in the window sill, in the window well and even all on the shrubs right outside the window. At this point it was 7 in the morning and I had already been up for about an hour, doing laundry, ironing, emptying the dishwasher and spot cleaning here and there, and I was exhausted. Normally Charles does a lot of the household chores, sometimes more than I do, but this morning he had to get up early and get out of the house for a meeting he had first thing so I was trying to get some things accomplished before Cam woke up. But now I had this puke party to contend with. I felt so bad for Cameron, I mean how upset he must have been to cry to the point of vomiting. For the next half hour, I scrubbed and hosed until all the puke was gone, inside and out of the house. As I hosed the last trace of vomit off the front of our house, all I could think about was how this is easy stuff compared to what lies in store for me after this baby comes – that is when I anticipate Cam will REALLY be upset. If I think cleaning a little puke off the wall is tough, I will really be blown away when Cam is screaming because I am trying to feed a crying newborn and he feels he is not getting enough attention – I can see the whole scenario unfolding already.
So, as I am hosing off the house, standing there in my pajamas, no bra, no makeup, glasses and bed head, my neighbor comes over walking his little Yorkie (yech) so he can take his morning crap, and starts up a conversation with me. While I really like my neighbor, he can talk forever and mostly about nothing in particular. In addition, he is hard of hearing and even though he wears hearing aids, you still have to scream to be heard. So here I am with Cameron virtually naked, standing in the window, me, bedraggled, hosing puke off my house with my neighbor talking to me and my screaming to him in response. The worst part of the conversation was when I spied the “crap bag” my neighbor was holding in his hand. When I refer to crap bag, I mean a plastic baggie that a dog owner uses to scoop up the dog crap with his hand, and then carries around with him until he gets home and can properly dispose of it. Now – while I understand the need for the crap bag and I appreciate that the dog owner is indeed scooping the crap up instead of letting his dog go on my lawn, I REALLY hate looking at a crap bag. Especially when I am pg, prone to nausea, even now, and haven’t had a thing to eat and it is first thing in the morning. As I look at the bag (don’t read this part if you are easily nauseated), I can see that the crap has smashed somewhat and there is crap smeared like wet clay all over the inside of the bag. What I would like to know is why is it that dog owners don’t see how gross this concept actually is? How can they hold a bag of wet crap, even if it is in plastic – doesn’t it make them sick? And why do they think it is not offensive for the rest of us non-dog owners to have to witness it? And why can’t they walk their dogs in the woods and avoid the crap bag altogether? We live right next to a huge woodsy area where there are nothing but acres of trees for a dog to crap next to – if I were a dog owner, I’d personally prefer to walk the few extra feet just so I could avoid the crap bag. And what do you even DO with the crap bag when you get home? Do you chuck it in your garbage bin to rot until trash day? Do you throw it in the toilet? What? The color of it is just sickening and while standing there next to my neighbor, the whole thing becomes like the white elephant in the corner to me – even though I know I should just not look, I can’t help it. I start to heave internally and quickly excuse myself so I can go inside and lie down and try to quell the dry heaves that are sure to come. I decide I don’t need this (no pun intended) crap in my life and attempt to settle my stomach with some green tea and a bowl of Wheat Chex. Cameron by this time has settled down and is watching a new Elmo video we bought yesterday called “Learning to Share,” featuring Katie Couric. Upon hearing her voice, I feel even sicker than I did looking at the smeared dog crap and throw my cereal in the trash. I go into the den and lie down, with a pillow over my head and repeat to myself “This day will get better, this day will get better…”
And they wonder why my blood pressure is high.
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