Carina Update

We spoke again to one of the neonatologists this afternoon. They have started her feedings again; the first one was at noon. They will be weaning her onto food slowly. If she tolerates the feedings well, they will gradually increase the amount over the next few days. Gavin asked the doctor we spoke to today (we've spoken to three different docs so far) what his speculation is as to the problem. He told us that because she's been in such good shape otherwise it may very well be that the blood was swallowed during delivery (perhaps the placenta tore, which would cause the labs to show it as fetal blood). So, there very well may be nothing really wrong with her. Other possibilities are a stomach ulcer, or a bowel problem, but they've seen no evidence of either yet. They're being careful, though, and they expect to keep her for observation at least through the weekend. Gavin and I are visiting her in the NICU twice a day, can hold her while we're there, and are expecting to start giving her some of the feedings ourselves.

We're hanging in there. Every indication is that she's going to be just fine. Thanks for all the good thoughts.

Carina Arrives

There's so much to say, but I can't do it all right now. Here's the short version:

Carina Faye Mendeck was born on May 27, 2007. She weighed 7 lb 11 oz, and was 19" long. She is a beautiful, active, precious little girl.

I've been discharged from the hospital. I'm feeling quite well, if a bit tired and emotional.

Carina has been spitting up blood, and the doctors determined that the blood is hers, not mine. They admitted her to the NICU last night at 3:00 AM. The source of the blood has not been found yet. In order to figure out what's wrong, they are only feeding her intravenously for now. It will take at least 3-5 days in NICU to finish the diagnostics. Until then, we can visit her there as much as we want. She is doing well despite the problem. She is active, not anemic, has good blood sugar, and all her x-rays have looked completely normal. The doctors are hopeful that the issue is one that will work itself out with rest.

Obviously, we are very diappointed that we couldn't bring our little girl home tonight. I was crying so much leaving the hospital that I'm sure people thought we lost the baby. We have every reason to believe that everything will be OK soon, though.

Thanks to all our friends and family that have already welcomed Carina into the world. We are so lucky to have you all.

A parent?

With all the preparations I’ve been making for Baby, one would think that by now I’d realize what is about to happen. But, over the last week I’ve been trying to imagine how my life will be in a few short weeks, and I’m finding myself completely unable to conceive of it. In a couple weeks, I will be a PARENT. As in what my mom is. As in there will be a tiny human being completely dependant on me for its every need. A real live baby, and it will be mine. I can’t wrap my head around it, really. I guess this is one of those things that’s so huge that the human brain simply can’t imagine it until you have the personal experience.

Everyone with kids keeps telling me how much my life will change. And I know it will, but on the other hand I can’t think how. I’ll still eat, drink, go out for walks. Sure, there will be a kid in tow, but how much can 10 pounds of baby really change things? Intellectually I know everything will seem different, but how? And why am I just now realizing that I haven’t yet really appreciated what we’re about to do?

I hope I don’t turn into one of those people who refuse to leave the house with their baby. I fully intend to take the baby to ball games, hike with the baby, travel with the baby. In short, I intend to keep my lifestyle - modified to include Baby, but not defined by Baby. Too ambitious? I guess only time will tell.

Sick

My body seems to be able to judge the most inconvenient times for me to get sick, and then lets some bug get to me just during these times. Like right before we travel to South America. Or two weeks before I'm supposed to have a baby.

I am soooooo miserable. I'm tired, but I can't sleep, my head feels like a balloon, and my nose is running like a faucet. I think I may break down and take some Tylenol soon.

Blame

Me to Gavin about an hour ago...

"YOUR CHILD has strong legs, and it's trying to push one of them through my belly."

Flying by Feel

Baby Watch Update: As of this morning, the doctor says I’m 60% effaced and 2 cm dialated. He says that things are “right on track” for my due date. So, we may be waiting a couple weeks yet. This turns out to be a good thing as he’s going out of town next week. I know from watching my dad that you can’t count on getting your own doctor for a delivery, but it would be nice.

I went flying yesterday for what I decided would be my last time before Baby. I’m just getting more and more unwieldly every day. My instructor took a picture of me in the plane, so when he e-mails it to me I’ll post my “Jen in the cockpit 37+ weeks pregnant” picture.

The lesson was good - I did instrument work for most of an hour. Luckily I, like Jose, seem to have no trouble with getting sick under the hood. It was rather bumpy, too, so if that didn’t do it… My instructor even did this thing where he made me close my eyes and fly the plane for a minute by feel. I then opened my eyes to see how off I was. I could tell while I was doing it that I had a tendency to let the nose drop, because I could hear the airspeed pick up. Then when I opened my eyes, the horizon was rolled about 20 deg right wing down. He told me he has people do that to disillusion them that they can fly by feel. I assured him that I wasn’t surprised at all that I couldn’t fly by feel! I have trouble doing that test where you close your eyes and stand on one leg.

Men's Pocky

Mighty Girl posted a slideshow about Pocky sticks today. I saw this snack for the first time when I went to Japan. Someone I was with pulled a Men’s Pocky box off the shelf and asked if I’d ever had one. I immediately had to buy several boxes to take home with me. First of all, because dark-chocolate covered pretzel sticks are THE BOMB, and secondly because of how absured the “Men’s Pocky” marketing was to me. As if us delicate ladies couldn’t handle the DARK chocolate. Watch out, it’s the strong stuff!

Anyway, I totally want a box of Pocky sticks, now. I bet you can get them somewhere in Houston, but I couldn’t begin to guess where.

Back in Flight

After two weeks of airplane repairs, I got to fly again last night amidst the towering cumulus clouds. That’s not as exciting as it sounds; it basically means that we stayed in the pattern so that we could get down quickly if something bad blew over us. But, in the end, it turned out to be beautiful flying weather, although being in the pattern for the first time in over a month meant that I didn’t look around and admire things as much as would be nice.

I had a pretty good day of landings, though. That was encouraging since it has been a while since a pattern day went that well. Since I had my instructor with me just in case I started having a baby or something, we took advantage of the quiet pattern to do a simulated engine-out landing. I did OK, although that little plane glides a lot further than I always think it will.

I’m starting to think that my flight training won’t take as big a hit from the baby break as I thought it would. I never would have thought I’d still be flying at 37 weeks, but the only hard part is getting in and out of the plane. And, I have an awesome flight instructor that doesn’t mind climbing into a plane with a pregnant woman. So, maybe just a month or so off for the birth and immediate freakiness of learning to be a parent. Not too bad!

Anxiety

I think I had my first pre-parent anxiety dream a couple nights ago. Warning: this is about breast feeding. Becca - you may want to stop reading. :)

I was nursing our baby. The baby was only supposed to be a few days old in the dream, couldn’t hold his head up, but was like 2 1/2 feet tall and must have weighed at least 25 pounds. Anyhow, in the dream I was still trying to get the hang of breastfeeding and it took a few tries to get going. Once, he choked on the milk, scaring the living hell out of me. Then he finally got on an nursed until he was full.

Here’s where the dream gets weird.

After he was full, I couldn’t get the milk to stop coming out. It just kept coming. I was soaking towels with it. Getting it all over everything. Meanwhile, I can’t clean off in the bathroom, because my brother-in-law is in there cleaning the mud off the paws of Dooce’s dog. (Why was Dooce’s dog there? Who knows?)

Eventually, the stress of the never-ending milk woke me up. And then I couldn’t get back to sleep for an hour and a half. Which has also been a theme recently.

Getting closer

Doctor’s appointment update: My cervix is in the “mid” position, and I’m about 1 cm dialated. He says that he expects I won’t go into labor before our appointment next week, but that I’m starting to get ready.

Some of our friends had their first baby on Friday. They named him Aerik, and he’s adorable. So, Baby M has a playmate already.

I might be nesting. I cleaned out our junk room to make it usable as a 2nd guest room when Jessica, Pat, and Caroline come this summer. Gavin was at work Saturday, and I found myself unable to sit still for more than 20-30 minutes.

Stupid lightning

The airplane got fixed today just a few hours before I was scheduled to fly. Score! I thought. When the time came, I called the weather and it says "thunderstorm in vicinity". Well, I don't want any part of that. So, no flying tonight. :(

We went to lunch at Mediterranean Chef today with Gavin's parents. Yum! I don't know what it is, but I've been craving gyros and hummus the last couple months. Guess there's worse things I could be craving.

Work and Pregnancy

I was sitting in a conference room yesterday, waiting for a meeting to start. Someone walked past, and seeing that it was just me and another woman in there and that we didn’t look like we were talking business yet, he stuck his head into the room.

“Be careful hanging around her,” he says to the other woman, pointing at me. “That could be catching.”

Normally a comment like that wouldn’t bother me. Ha, ha, pregnancy is catching. But, there are two circumstances that made it bother me this time.

1) A few weeks ago when I was lamenting that my due date is at a particularly inconvenient time relative to some things going on at work, he said to me “Well, you chose to have kids.” Like I just got pregnant without any consideration of the consequences to my professional life, which, as people familiar with this blog must realize, was not the case at all.

2) I happen to know that this other woman has been trying to get pregnant for a year and that she’s having some serious fertility problems. She’s handling it well emotionally, but I know how crazy waiting made me. And, I wasn’t in a place yet where I thought something might be wrong. She knows there’s something wrong.

I felt bad for her. And, I don’t see why me taking 2 months off work to have a baby is such a crazy thing. Some people take two months off to go on vacation. Just because I can’t control which two months this pregnancy would take doesn’t mean that I have any less professional ambition than before.

Where I've been

Thanks to you-know-who for the link.

States I've visited...


create your own visited states map
or check out these Google Hacks.

If I take off the ones that I've only been to for single night drum corps shows...



I don't care so much about the midwest, but I really need to take a trip to New England.

Here are Gavin's:

-2

Went to the doctor this morning for my 36 week appointment. The verdict: my cervix is in the posterior position and the baby's head is at station -2. Translation: the baby has started to drop into my pelvis, but it looks like it will be a few more weeks. Since we did all that work this weekend to get ready in case Baby came early, I won't be surprised if it's another month before I deliver.

I also discovered that the tingling I'd been noticing in my right hand was not my imagination. It's apparently pregnancy induced carpal tunnel. The doc says that since I developed it so late in pregnancy, it will probably go away after I give birth and stop having all this swelling. I hope so! I'm thinking about going and buying a splint to keep my wrist from curling over while I'm sleeping, though. Don't want permanent issues!

We also got our glider rocker tonight (thanks, Mom!). It was less difficult to put together than I thought. Now we have a rocker for each floor. :)

Bye

5:00 AM is very early to get up. Plus, it makes you hungry for lunch at 9:30 AM, which makes you hungry for dinner at about 3:00 PM. Which is now. Fortunately, this is balanced by being at work by 6:30 AM which means that I can go home any time. And I think I will.

Prep Work

I spend most of the weekend in a "prepare for baby" mode. I returned the duplicate gifts we got from the baby showers, and bought up what felt like half the store to fill out what we didn't get already. Then I started down the list...

1) Pack a hospital bag
2) Sterilize bottles and pacifiers
3) Assemble stroller, infant rocker
4) Put car seat in car
5) Put toys in bins
6) Assemble / put away the rest of the stuff

I also found some time to do some things for what might be the last time until Baby is born. Get a haircut. See a movie. I'm not sure I'm satisfied with Spiderman 3 being the last movie I see before Baby is born. Although they did show a Harry Potter trailer, which was very cool.

2-5-8

Gavin and I went to meet the baby’s pediatrician yesterday. Isn’t that an awfully grown up thing to do? You’d think at 30 I’d consider myself grown up, but I find there are some things that make me feel more so than normal. Anyhow, the pediatrician was good. He seemed quite pleased that this engineer couple didn’t come in with a whole legal pad full of specific questions to ask. I always feel slightly unprepared when I don’t have specific questions, but I think it usually releives whichever service provider we’re interviewing. "Ah, a laid-back couple. Finally!"

It suddenly dawned on me this week that since you’re considered full term 3 weeks before your due date, that means that I should be ready to have this baby any time from 2 weeks from now until 8 weeks from now in mid-June. The two weeks thing really snuck up on me. Suddenly, I’m thinking about how to package projects up for other people at work, needing to pack a bag for the hospital, needing to call the diaper service and arrange for the first delivery, and on and on. And yet it’s hard to take it seriously because the due date is still more than a full month away.

I took a stadium seat with me to the baseball game last night, and it at least helped me watch the Astros lose in moderately more comfort. Really, you could see the writing on the wall in about the 2nd inning last night. It just wasn’t going to happen. And then there we were in the 9th, with Jason explaining to his friend that "I know it’s 12-2, but we have this thing about leaving the games early. As in we don’t..."