Pregnancy and Motherhood Archive

This morning Kurt put his hand around my basketball shaped belly and said, “dribble dribble”. I thought he was referring to the drip marks on my nightgown and responded with a whiny, “It’s soap!” The new liquid hand soap dispenser in our bathroom shoots soap across the room instead of down into the cupped hand as a normal dispenser should. In my case, my belly catches the soap before it hits the wall or floor. Kurt laughed, “Did you think I was calling you messy?” Yes! - *insert boo-boo lip* He was actually just pointing out that it looks as if I’ve swallowed a basketball (my words not his).

I think I think I have found my bikini line or at least I have found a line that leads from my belly button to where I last remember my bikini line being. I first noticed this about three days ago. I thought I was just seeing things, but no, the Linea Nigra has appeared.

Today I had another crappy dose of what I’m guessing is heartburn. I don’t really know because before this pregnancy I’ve never felt these symptoms and as far as I can remember I’ve never felt anything that made someone say, “Here, take this. It sounds like you have heartburn.” This morning’s heartburn came about two hours after eating Honey Nut Granola cereal with almonds and then again in the evening after drinking strawberry lemonade.

Overall, the day was good. After work, a friend and I went to a yard sale. I struck up another conversation with the seller but this time I was standing in the shade. It was funny because the lady was commenting on our warms days and then said, “Well at least you don’t have to go through your third trimester in the summer.” Uuummm actually I’m in my third trimester. *grin* She couldn’t believe it. After that my friend and I went to some stores and I bought two Oshkosh outfits for Sophia – I’m not going to discuss how much I spent (even though every item I bought was on sale) because I just learned that Kurt is actually reading this blog. – Love you Honey.

On Saturday I spent the day garage saling with a friend. The day was gorgeous so I wore one of my summer pregnancy tops as opposed to an oversized t-shirt. Except in the shade, I didn’t need a jacket. It was the first time I gave strangers the opportunity to see my belly and the first time people started asking me, “When are you due?” It was a little odd. It wasn’t a good or bad it just caught me off guard. Thankfully I didn’t get any unsolicited advice. I’ve heard and read stories about it, but with exception to my mother telling me what to eat, I haven’t run into it. – Where oh where is a piece of actual wood?

The only problem that I did have was at one sale this lady had two sleepsacks / sleep blankets that were red and had, “Baby’s first Christmas” embroidered on it. They were both new with the tags still on, so I snatched one up and asked her how much she wanted for it. This is how it all began. I now know more about that woman and her twin granddaughters than I ever cared to know. Don’t get me wrong, the lady was very nice and at first it was sweet to hear about her tiny twin granddaughters in California, but after a while I could feel the sun starting to burn my shoulders. I felt like a trapped animal, and she continued with telling me about her daughter-in-law finding two very nice cribs on craigslist for $100 from a woman that had triplets – that’s fantastic, but I can feel my scalp burning now. There was no shade on this woman’s driveway. I should have asked her for some juice or other refreshment - even prisoners of war get water. We finally made our escape when another pair of garage salers were drawn in.

Normally I don’t burn this easily. I’ve heard that the skin changes when you’re pregnant, so here is yet another symptom. I actually did experience skin color changes very early in my pregnancy and forgot to list it as one of my many first trimester symptoms, but I’ll get to that later. For now, on to our irregularly scheduled program…

Kurt and my parents all commented on my sunburn that night and I told them about the garage sale lady. The next day when Kurt and I were in the shower he asked, “What’s that on your shoulder?” He was pointing to the back of my shoulder; gee, I don’t know could you be more vague? “I don’t know. Does it look like a mole? What color is it?” I asked. He described it as a very dark brown ring that was white in the center. Then he asked me if it was a pimple. “Does brown with white in the center sound like a pimple to you?” I was a little freaked out, but as it turns out it was just one of my chickenpox scars that got too much sun – it turned brown while the rest of my shoulder was red and the scar part stayed white. It wasn’t even as freakish looking as he made it out. Remind me never to pay attention to his descriptions of things when he’s not even wearing his contacts. I blamed the garage sale lady for the burn and Kurt said, “I never thought I’d ever tell you this but don’t be so fucking polite! Next time just leave!”

The other skin issue I had was actually one of my very first symptoms that I had forgotten about. My armpits actually got extremely dark. It was February so this wasn’t just some odd tanning and when I say dark I mean three shades of pantyhose darker than my normal winter color. It looked horribly out of place – similar to those people that spend their life working outside in the sun wearing a t-shit and then one day they go shirtless. The parts seem to come from another person and attached to a very pale torso. I stopped using the only product (other than soap) that I use in my armpits. I used Jason Natural - Deodorant Apricot w/Vitamin E Stick without any problems for more than a year – now I use Crystal which is 100% natural mineral salts and Kurt must give my hell about my “magic rock”. *eye roll*

Ok forget the leg cramp connection. I did it again this morning and I don’t remember dreaming. I’m feeling miserable lately from emotional issues that began last week when a close friend/coworker of mine had a miscarriage to some crappy pregnancy symptoms that are either, coming back or getting worse as I enter the third trimester.

My nosebleeds are back again. I think they were gone for a total of six weeks. I forgot to mention them (along with the fact that I felt like I breathing through a respirator) on my post about my first trimester symptoms because it’s not really that big a deal. It isn’t like gushing – I have to pinch my nose and tilt my head down – actual nosebleeds. It’s just when I have to blow my nose, which in my first trimester was all the time, blood does come out. The closest I came to an actual bloody nose was the three days I spent at a conference in Vegas the first week of last month. I woke up one morning with a stuffy nose so I went to blow my nose and the only thing that came out was blood. I used three tissues – I mention it because I know you live for such details.

The other pregnancy symptom I’m battling is relatively new. I think I’ve had it for about two weeks now, but it truly jumped on my nerves in the past two or three days. I have this almost constant tickle in my throat that feels like there is something stuck. This doesn’t happen merely along with meals and doesn’t get better with fluids – as a matter a fact it can start two or more hours after eating. It feels like I can get rid of it by belching, but that doesn’t actually work. The feeling is worse when I go to bed because laying down causes me to cough and in turn loose sleep.

My emotions from the past week’s events aren’t helping my sleep either though. I keep thinking back to the miscarriage I had nine years ago. I didn’t have a job at the time so I was on state insurance (WIC?). At eight weeks I started spotting and of course went to see the doctor. They told me that it was probably just my body trying to have a period at the same time it would have normally or something like that. I didn’t believe them and so they did a stupid urine test. Of course the hormones still registered because I hadn’t miscarried – I was just spotting. But they didn’t bother doing anything else for me and sent me off on my merry little way. The spotting only lasted for three days and was very very light. Two weeks later I was sitting in my computer operating systems class, and I felt a very cold feeling come over me. I wasn’t actually cold nor was my skin cold to the touch – it was a cold feeling similar to walking into a creepy old house. That night I started cramping up. It was Monday July 13th 1998. At around ten that night I was alternating between lying on the floor and sitting on the toilet waiting for it to come out. Aloud I kept saying, “If it’s going to happen just make it happen.” The “if” was me trying to hang on to the last bit of hope that it wasn’t what I thought. By 11 it had passed in one solid unidentifiable mass into the toilet about two inches in diameter and six inches in length. It doesn’t seem right that my baby had the same burial that many give to a goldfish, but I still wouldn’t know what else to do. I bled for the about the next two weeks.

Everyone at work knew my friend and I are close and that she didn’t want anyone to mention her miscarriage at work, so they came to me on the days that she was gone to give their condolences. That was fine but a few made the comment of, “well she’s still young”. I know they didn’t mean anything hurtful by the comment but to me it’s about as appropriate as commenting at a funeral, “well grandma was old after all”. It’s as if there is no real reason to mourn. Nine years later it still hurts and I still think about what my eight year old daughter would be like. I didn’t actually know the gender I just feel like it was probably a girl. Her name would have been Mikah Jenelle and her due date was February 14, 1999.

There seems to be a connection between my dreaming and leg cramps. Last night I dreamed I was in high school again and had just started at another new school. I had located the girl’s locker room and was early for my gym class. The locker room was located down an empty hall behind a thin but heavy steel door immediately followed by two other doors, one literally after another. I sat on a bench across from another early bird comfortably stretched across the bench on her belly resting her chin on her crossed forearms. Apparently I was in a class that was generally just for freshmen and I was a junior. The girl didn’t understand that I wasn’t just new to the school but also to the area. Finally she got it and asked me if I had left a boyfriend back home. I told her, “no but I already have one here.” I guess I was dating a 23 year-old. At this point, I started to wake up and that always means it’s time for the morning stretch – OUCH! I stretched both legs at the same time. Oh why did I do that?! Why did I do that?! Why did I point my toes? I’ve been so good about it lately.

Just for the record, in real life I attended three high schools. I had left a boyfriend at my first high school and I turned down the 23 year-old that asked me out when I was a sophomore attending my second high school. I guess I don’t dream too far outside reality.

Is sloppiness a side effect of pregnancy? I’m not usually this clumsy. I just made myself some toast and I think the counter received more of my apricot preserves than my toast did. And yesterday I hope none of my co-workers noticed my shirt after lunch. With a few exceptions, I’m generally not a messy eater. Tostadas and Ribs are the only two foods I can think of that I tend to wear as much as I eat. I reserve them for my grubbier – there is no one here to impress days. Now I can’t even eat a piece of fruit without squirting the juice all over myself. Thankfully the fruits I’ve been eating dry clear and don’t leave stains. But fruit juices weren’t my problem on Friday, nope. On Friday I ate lunch and apparently had a hole in my lip or a tracheotomy that I’ve never noticed before. Sometime after eating I got up to use the restroom and saw that I had a creamy white streak down the front of my black shirt. Oh isn’t that a lovely site possibly belonging in a porn movie! It was just cottage cheese – really I swear!

On Monday I discovered two things I can no longer do. The first is getting off the couch without using my arms to help lift myself off or rolling. I tried to do this without the help of my arms and my stomach muscles (what’s left of them) felt like they were going to split. The other thing was sit in a chair with my feet on the seat and my thighs against my stomach - it simply doesn’t work. My stomach is a greedy ba$t@rd and won’t allow my legs to get that close to me.

Today I had a doctor appointment. I now weight 158 pounds. For those keeping track - I have gained 28 pounds and I’m only on week 25. How on earth does one gain 28 pounds eating fruit? The doctor took out the measuring tape and announced that my uterus was in the right spot - Well that’s just fabulous because I was worried that half of it was in my thighs and @$$.

The doctor also said that according to my ultrasound the updated due date for Sophia is September 27th.

I noticed this morning in the shower that I have lost my bikini line. I have no idea why loosing my bikini line made me think of a line from an old Jeff Foxworthy skit for the title of this post, but it did and so I went with it. It’s possible that I have also lost my marbles. Now back to my line. I know I should start looking where I last left it, but I don’t remember putting it anywhere new. I’ve kept it pretty much in the same place for 31 years! Unlike my hip bones my bikini line was there just two days ago. I know this because I remember checking just to make sure. I could see my hip bones disappearing almost right away and I knew they would eventually disappear completely. It used to bug me that my hip bones stuck out further than my stomach - almost like shelves. I always thought I looked like a starved cow with my bones poking out everywhere, but now I want them back. I hope I’ll be able to see them again after all this. And another thing, where did all these blood veins come from? They aren’t bulging - They aren’t varicose veins, but damn these blue lines are all over the place!

Last week I received a newsletter from a magazine to which I subscribe. Actually it was from their website birdchannel.com. At the bottom was an ad from hobbyfarms.com that caught my eye. It read, “Looking for good recipes? We’ve got everything from animal treats to zucchini bread”. I didn’t bother to see where the ad was from at first. I just saw that picture of zucchini bread and wanted some. I snagged recipes for cornbread and pumpkin biscuits as well.

Tonight I made the biscuits which reminded me why I don’t bake, ever! It started with me getting out the mixing bowl to combine the dry ingredients the next step was to mix in the cold butter until the mixer was “crumbly” but I couldn’t find our 30 year-old avocado green hand mixer. “Kurt where’s the mixer?”

“You mean the old hand mixer?”

“Yes”

“You threw it out when we got the Kitchen Aid mixer” Yep that sounds like me. I can’t deny that one. So I wash out the bowl that comes with the Kitchen Aid, dry it out, and pour my dry mixture into the bowl dumping some of it into the sink (at least I think a little bit ahead and know some ain’t gonna make it through the transfer). I added the butter, but I never got the “crumbly” look that the instructions said to watch for - I’m not even sure the butter really mixed in. Oh well, the next ingredient is milk - oops that was a little too much. Add the pumpkin - oops a bit too much of that too. Why is this stuff so damn sticky? How in the hell will I roll it out? Ok I’ll just add more flower…this isn’t working. I told Kurt I didn’t think they were going to turn out and he said, “that’s ok I appreciate your effort.” Now most women would say, “aawww that’s so sweet” but I know Kurt.

With one eyebrow raised, “You just said that so you have the freedom to spit it back out in front of me if you don’t like it didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah” he answered. In the end he said they turned out pretty well even though at one point during our meal Kurt accidentally dropped his biscuit and it made a “thud” sound on the table. We burst into laughter and of course had to tease the crap out of me by writing on our calendar that I made, “Bean soup and pumpkin flavored concrete”. He actually ate two of my pumpkin flavored concrete disks. And yes, we keep a calendar of who made which meal on what day - it helped eliminate most of our arguments about whose turn it is to wash the wretched dishes.

If you can’t find the recipe on the hobby farms site here it is:

You can use commercially canned or homegrown pumpkin for this recipe. If doing the latter, bake the pumpkin rather than boil it in order to get a drier, denser product. After scraping the baked flesh from the rinds, use an electric mixer to beat until smooth. Remove any tough, fibrous pieces that didn’t cook down.

Ingredients
2 cups all-purpose flour
¼ cup brown sugar
1 tsp. salt
3 T. baking powder
1 Tsp. cinnamon
½ tsp. nutmeg
¼ tsp. allspice
1/8 tsp. ginger
1/3 cup butter, cold
¾ cup pumpkin
¾ cup milk
additional flour if needed

Preparation
Stir together dry ingredients. Using a pastry blender, cut in butter until mixture resembles coarse crumbs. Add pumpkin and milk, stirring just until ingredients are moistened and a soft dough forms. If the dough seems very soft, add more flour, a few tablespoons at a time, just until the dough is easy to handle.

On a lightly floured surface, roll out dough to a half-inch thick. Using a 2-inch biscuit or cookie cutter in a simple shape of your choice (such as a pumpkin or leaf), dip the cutter into flour, shake off excess and press into biscuit dough. Place biscuits on a lightly greased cookie sheet one-inch apart and bake at 450 degrees F for 8 to 12 minutes or until golden brown. Serve hot with butter and honey or apple butter. Makes about 12 biscuits.

That is the recipe exactly as it shown on the hobby farms site, so I have no idea if the “1 Tsp. cinnamon” is actually a tablespoon or a teaspoon. It is the only one with a capital “T”, but still has the “sp”. I used a tablespoon. In addition, I think if I make this another time I’m going to cut the baking powder to one tablespoon instead of THREE and just add more flour. I hope that I’ll get more fluffy biscuits instead of such dense and heavy bread.

This morning I woke up like any other morning this week. I specify “this week” because lately some mornings have been little unique with me constantly loosing my keys and forgetting what I’m doing - did I brush my teeth already? Oh, well I’ll just do it again. Today I got up and ate breakfast (cereal) with Kurt, drank my Citrucel, took a shower, got dressed, fed the bird, and then began to make my lunch. I took out a few things for my lunch and then very suddenly felt light-headed/dizzy and decided it would be better if I sat down for a bit. After sitting I quickly felt that maybe laying down would be safer. I drug myself upstairs and laid down taking note that I had ten minutes to try and make it to work. It took me three attempts to complete an email to my supervisor letting him know that I would be in late.