The week started off with a visit to the ear, nose and throat (ENT) doctor for Andy’s ruptured eardrum. After he returned from the appointment where he saw the PA, I received the following email:
Well, there is good news and bad news. The good news is I should be able to hear again. The bad news is that I need to get surgery to make that happen. The doctor said the damage was too extensive to repair itself. So I get to have a procedure called a tympanoplasty. This is where they cut out some muscle fibers from my head, then cut the back of my ear open and attach the muscle fibers to the ear drum.
Yikes! That does not sound good and I hate the fact that he will have to go under anaesthesia. Since that email, his hearing has been getting better so we are hoping that when he sees the doctor next week, he will tell him that the ear drum is actually healing nicely without the surgery. Cross your fingers. I was supposed to receive my own piece of medical news later that day with the results of my diabetes test last Friday. I still had not heard at 4:45pm so I called the doctor’s office. They called me back within a few minutes with the following results that I sent out to my close friends and family to update them on my status: I just got my blood test results back.
Normal: Mine:
Fasting 65-99 82 :)
1-hour after glucose <180 144 :)
2-hours after glucose <155 100 
3-hours after glucose <140 57 :|
That last number is quite low which means that I am not diabetic but they were concerned I would have felt light-headed. I guess this just goes to show that my light-headed feeling when I don’t eat often enough is not made up. Also, my CBC (Complete Blood Count) is low which means I am anemic. Normal is 37-51 and I am 33. I guess I was anemic when they first tested my blood earlier in the pregnancy, but not so much so that they were concerned. They do not see any reason to put me on anything to adjust it but I am encouraged to eat more iron…so as Anna said, “Beef, its what’s for dinner.”
Starting this week, I have been feeling like I am drugged in the afternoons around 2pm, kind of like back in the first trimester when I was so sleepy. I so wish we had a little nap room at work because I feel like even a 20 minute nap would revive me and allow me to be more energetic for the rest of the day. My admin said that she knows some women use the breastfeeding rooms to take naps but that seems wrong to me.
Friday after work, Andy and I went down to the 8th St. Marketplace to see Derik’s new company’s office. He and his business partner, Dave, are starting a business called Tsuvo which specializes in internet marketing. They are pretty excited and they really have a great setup. They already have quite a few clients, including one who is a global client. I really hope they do well and think that the have the talent to do so.
Since I am not running anymore, I now look forward to my weekend walks. This morning, I walked a trail we call “Golden Sands” with my parents and enjoyed getting out in the brisk morning sunshine and getting some good exercise. I do already miss running and was so energized by a conversation I had with a friend yesterday about possibly training for a fall marathon (would I be crazy?) and training techniques, etc. Absence is already making the heart fonder, but I am thrilled that I can still do low-impact exercise. I cannot imagine what I would do if I had to stop!
As the weekly pregnancy emails I receive predicted, I can tell that I am becoming more emotional this trimester. I noticed a couple of nights when I came home from work, I had zero tolerance for anything. I have learned over the years to not say anything when I feel that way because more than likely it will not be nice and whoever it is directed at does not deserve it. Nowadays, I just tell Andy that I feel emotional and he gets it. Years ago he used to think it was something he did and needed to talk about and/or fix which was not the right response.
I have really started to notice how much all of the negative news with the economy really bothers me. I am a news junkie, or was, at least when I was living in Asia, but I think I am going to take a news hiatus because I cannot deal with all of the negative news in my precious mental state. The really interesting thing was how I reacted to the contrary, something funny. Thursday night after watching CSI, Andy turned to the HBO show, “Flight of the Concords.” We started watching it and ten minutes later I found myself crying I was laughing so hard (I do not laugh easily.) Then, each time something funny would happen, we would both start out by chuckling but mine would progress into tears almost every time. We followed up the show with watching the duo live on stage via youtube from the iPhone in bed and I had to have Andy turn it off because I didn’t think I would be able to sleep if I kept laughing (and crying). In short, the emotions are heightened.
I have been contemplating all week about where I want to take this blog in the coming weeks when many of the out of the ordinary things we are going to be experiencing are most likely going to be related to the body and probably TMI (too much information) for most people. It would be very easy for me to omit all of these things like everyone else does, but if I do that, you will only hear the wonderful wonders of having a baby and none of the other stuff that frankly freaks me out right now and I wish I knew more about it. My friends Jen and Becca are the only two people besides Jenny McCarthy in Belly Laughs who I feel I have been given fairly accurate and COMPLETE birthing stories. In many people’s defense, I think I probably was not interested in hearing such stories before now and after a year, the pregnancy memory loss has fully set in and the only memories of child birthing are more or less glorious (I don’t buy it). Also, I do not generally ask others to share their stories, because it just doesn’t come up, “hey tell me about child birth…did it hurt?” Surprisingly, I have found that my male coworkers love to share their wives stories, but I prefer getting the gritty details from the horse’s mouth. What I have ultimately concluded is that I will create a TMI section at the end of the blogs where I would like to share “too much information” and you can decide for yourself if you want to read it. If I don’t know you very well or you think you will look at me differently after knowing that my enlarged uterus is causing the ligaments in my pelvis to ache when I run, then I highly recommend you stop now rather than proceeding into the “Too Much Information” section when it exists.
Too Much Information
The inaugural TMI section has to do with boobs. One night this week I decided to close the wonderful book I am reading, Crossing to Safety and dust off my favorite pregnancy book, The Pregnancy Bible. I had taken a hiatus on reading about pregnancy except when I had a question to which I would consult the web or my doctor. Now being at 30 weeks (3/4 of the way there, yea!), I started to panic that I am not at all prepared for the birth phase of this journey and thus the opening of the Pregnancy Bible. I jumped to the section on the last trimester and preparing for birth and somehow wandered into what I will call a “try this at home” section. It went into yoga-type exercises you should be doing in the last ten weeks of the pregnancy (basically a hell of a lot of squats) to help the baby reach an “head down” position, some way to start stretching out your vagina so you don’t tear in birth (yikes! it said not to start that until 34 weeks so I have time to decide if I want to go there), prolonged kegels (which I refer to as “kankles”) and finally, a test you can do with your nipples to see if they are going to perform well or poorly during breast feeding. Basically the nipple test said to squeeze the outside of your aureola and then watch to see if your nipple either sinks in or stands proud. Obviously, if it sinks in, breastfeeding could be a problem. Well, my babies stood proud but as I watched them saluting, I noticed something else…some liquid had been produced during the test. I think my initial reaction was, “ewww, gross, what the hell is that?” I showed Andy and he seemed under-enthused.
I was too tired to figure out what was happening that night so the next morning, I looked on the web and found out that pregnant women, especially in their third trimester start producing colostrum (aka “first milk” or “immune milk”). This milk is very important for babies when they are first born as it helps them fight off things that their fragile immune system is not ready for. But, wow was I surprised! After thirty-one years of pretty much nothing special happening with my breasts (no offense to those few lucky men they entertained), they suddenly can produce a liquid that our baby will need. You may be thinking, “duh, breastfeeding” but I will tell you what, when it happens to you, it is a whole other ball-game. Boobs suddenly have a purpose…and the fact that mine have grown and is causing my dang rib to hurt every night seems like less of a big deal now that they can produce something that helps sustain life.
Okay so that is enough of my TMI for this week. I can’t even begin to wonder what the topic will be next week. I hope the two of you who decided to continue reading are not thoroughly grossed out and will never look at me the same now that my breasts produce liquid. Probably not considering you probably could have figured out that they would start doing that soon enough. If you are grossed out, do not, I repeat DO NOT read the TMI section next week…I think it only gets grosser from here.
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