Night before last I dreamed that I was with a group of people at the Harry Potter world at Universal Studios in Orlando. It was hot and I was clearly, burdensomly pregnant, my shoulders slung low with bags that I realized belonged to the other people. I kept trying to stop and examine the incredibly detailed set pieces of the village, all of which seemed to be handmade and placed meticulously throughout the sets to…
This week has been blessedly free of medical freakouts and frantic internet searches leading to endless threads of panicked women posting their diagnoses and speculating about what they mean. In other words, this week has been a breeze. Okay, sort of. My body is starting to do some crazy shit that is taking its toll on me. It feels sometimes like my organs are in danger of falling out, either through my gut or through…
There was a moment during today’s early morning ultrasound (big thanks to the Mid-South Maternal Fetal Medicine for squeezing us in at such a late notice) when I felt the bulk of worry lift off me. I squeezed Ray’s hands as the tech, who was so nice and so thorough, went organ by organ, noting how everything looked great, all of it right on track in size and function. That bright bowel the Flinn Clinic…
Last night my dad told me my grandmother’s dog Jake had been hit and killed by a car. This isn’t an uncommon thing where I’m from; the dogs are free to roam all over the farm and they chase cars speeding by on the highway when they get bored. It’s frustrating but that’s how it’s been my whole life. I called Grandmaw to check on her and see how she was doing. Jake was her…
I’m a day late with this post. No time yesterday but today I’m convalescing and trying to get over a sinus infection, so I’m here at home, stressing out over my to-do list and shoving toilet paper up my nose. Bleh. I’ve made lots of phone calls today to try and put a dent in the things I need to take care of, only to be stymied at every turn. To console myself, I have…
I had a dream about the baby last night. He was big and white and bald, and sitting in someone’s lap next to me, drinking from a bottle. I instantly began worrying that he was drinking formula, and wondering why he wasn’t in my lap, breastfeeding. Where had I been? How had I allowed him to have formula when the plan was to breastfeed exclusively? And so on. So I took him into my lap…
This week the rollercoaster has not been terribly kind. Friday, just a couple of hours before I had to leave for work and just a few minutes after I published that last mopey post, I got a call from my midwife. She told me that the follow-up ultrasound we had mid-week had found a still-bright bowel (boo) but also — a new finding — a two-vessel cord. That means we’re being referred to a perinatologist…
Here we are at the halfway mark. In some ways I can’t believe it’s here already, but then I remember how slowly the time passed early on, when I had to keep this delicious secret to myself. And while I’m still worried about the ultrasound issue (we had a follow-up yesterday and the bowel is still bright — although to my lay eyes not nearly bright as bone, which would indicate a more severe problem,…
I lovehate the internet. On the one hand, in ye golden olden days, my midwife would have uttered the words “echogenic bowel” to me and I would have had to carve out some time between milking the cows and hanging the pig guts to walk uphill both ways toward a library, inside which I’d pore over medical books carefully in dusty, neglected library aisles, wondering what the densely packed terms actually meant. And worrying. On…
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