Nathan brought this home from school the other day. I remembered it after reading a post at Jenny’s site about letters her kids wrote her.

Imagine a sheet of paper with a picture of a house, a Mommy (who is not pregnant oddly enough) with two teeth and curly brown hair ( mine is blonde and straight) and a little boy with three sharp pointy teeth. Underneath are these words:

I love mi Mom ( I love my Mom )
Vare muth ( Very much)
and I lov hr ( and I love her)
vare muce (Very much)

My heart was a goopy puddle after reading that.

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Well, today I had my regular 37 week checkup. After last Thursday’s surprisingly low blood pressure, I guess I got a little too cocky, figured I could cheat a little on the couch-rest and actually do a few things around here. That was a bad idea right there.

Once again, I asked a friend to drive me to the appt., walked in veeerrryy slowly, and had a few minutes to rest in the waiting room. Despite all of that, after stepping off the scale (lost another pound) I headed into the bathroom to pee only to suddenly get hot and sweaty and see floating yellow-and-black specks swimming in front of my eyes. Fortunately the nurse was still standing right there, she helped me into the nearest exam room. She immediately took my blood pressure, which was 180/100. I know, holy CRAP. So she had me lay down, and practically ran for the doctor. When she got back, it had only gone down to 178/94.

Dr. Bell listened to the heartbeat, an excellent 144. I went and peed, uneventful this time. He did a cervix check-still closed, which is what you want for a c-section. My urine was clear of any proteins, so no signs of preeclampsia. Just really really high blood pressure.

So I am now on complete and absolute bed-rest. I can only get up to pee. I go back on Thursday, and if the blood pressure is still high, he may decide to deliver the baby Friday.
I will be 37 wks 3 days on Friday, which he assures me is a perfectly safe point at which to deliver. It would be far more dangerous for me to stay pregnant than for her to be born.

So! I just have to lay here for two more days, trying to keep my blood pressure down. I have complete faith in this Doctor, and Chris and the boys will take excellent care of me. My Dad is even coming over tomorrow to make me lunch so I don’t have to get up. I probably won’t post again until Thursday, although I’m sure I’ll be visiting everyone else’s blogs since there’s not much else to do all day. Thanks again for your positive comments and support. It really helps.

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Very Mom has a post about just how hard it is to get through the last few weeks of pregnancy. She is far and away a much better writer than me, but she got me thinking about what’s been going on with me this week.

In a word, EMOTIONS.

Lots and lots and lots of emotions. Sad, worried, scared? Yes. Anxious, nervous, impatient? Yep.
Overly sensitive to any criticism? Oh, you’d better believe it. BC and the boys have been great for the most part, I get lots of extra hugs and kisses, and BC has been doing pretty much ALL of the housework, shopping, cooking, reading to Nathan, helping with homework, etc.

So it’s not surprising that he gets tired, and crabby, and occasionally mutters something under his breath about my being less than pleasant to be around and then oh my god the TEARS. I haven’t cried this much in years.

I have also developed a general anxiety, a feeling of restlessness and impatience that I assume is part of the late-pregnancy process. I even feel what I think is the nesting instinct, which is hard to act on when you are supposed to be laying on the couch and your husband keeps saying “10 more minutes of cleaning out that cupboard and then you are sitting down!”

I read a blog recently written by a new Mom, I think her name is Daisy. She had some interesting thoughts on what it feels like to not be pregnant, the feeling you have after the baby is born and your stomach feels empty for the first time in Nine months. And I realized that I am going to miss that feeling. Pregnancy gives me a reason to be more in touch with my body than I ever am when I’m not pregnant. Plus as uncomfortable as it can be, there will never again be a PERSON inside me, moving and hiccuping (did I spell that right?). It seems natural to have a sense of loss, of emptiness after giving birth. Maybe that feeling contributes to post-partum depression, along with the chemical changes the body undergoes.

So while I am desperate to NOT be pregnant anymore, to be able to sit upright without feeling dizzy, to be able to ROLL OVER IN BED or sleep on my stomach, I also acknowledge that there are even more emotions coming. The joy of having the baby combined with the sadness of not being pregnant. The exhaustion of not sleeping, the uncertainty that comes with figuring out just what a new baby needs from one minute to the next.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. First I have to deal with the current emotions. In the interest of lightening both my mood and my family’s, I think I will turn to the one thing that always helps me feel better. Yes, I’m talking about ice cream. Tonight, while watching “Medium”, I will snuggle up to a pint of something chocolatey and peanut butter cup-y and make it all better. And if you read this whole post, you should have some too.

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Yesterday I had my follow-up blood pressure check at the OBs. I asked my Dad to drive me to the appointment, since I suspect that driving there, parking and walking in might be enough to drive my BP up. On our way down the hall to the office I looked at him, 71 years old, walking with a cane, and said “I hope they don’t think you’re my husband!”. He thought that was funny.

So the nurse takes me first to be weighed, ugggh, and to my surprise I actually weigh 3 pounds LESS than I did on Monday! Note to self: do not eat Taco Bell the night before an appointment.

First comes the strapping on of the LARGE blood pressure cuff. It is so embarassing every time I go and the nurse has to go borrow the LARGE cuff from someone, like my arms are just so HUGE. Then comes the request to lay down on my left side. I’m already precariously balanced on this high, narrow table, and they want me to maneuver myself around and down. Whee!

Blood pressure reading is 134/74. TWENTY POINTS lower than Monday! I would have done a happy dance around the room but it takes too long to get up off the table. So NO 24-hour monitoring, no pre-eclampsia, MUCH less scared than Monday.

I do , however, need to continue the bed-rest just to be safe. Which is fine. My husband has learned how much of a pain it is to cook dinner every night, while I lay on the couch and shout directions at him. “You have to keep stirring the onions or they’ll burn!” “Is something burning?” “Um, honey?” You get the picture.

But then my Dad casually informs me that my Grandma, who hosts her side of the family at her house every Thanksgiving, has cancelled her dinner and wants to come here to eat with us. And, you know, “help”. Those of you who have ever had family over for dinner know that you can’t just lay on the couch while your elderly Dad and even more elderly Grandma try to find the serving spoons and salt shaker and make gravy. AHHH! I may just lock myself in the bedroom and not come out until dinner’s on the table. They can watch football and entertain themselves.

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Our community publishes a small, once-a-week newspaper. The Public Safety section reports how many calls the Sheriff’s department had that week, and then goes into more detail about specific crimes for each day of that week. Here’s what happened Oct. 23, 2005:

“Deputies were dispatched to the 4600 block of Grandwood for a report of malicious destruction of property. The homeowner discovered spray painted writing on his garage door. The suspect was not identified, but is a poor speller.”

It is a sad state of affairs when kids can’t even spell their insults correctly.

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