Wait, 33? Is it really 33 weeks?
This whole time I have had no trouble knowing exactly how many weeks and days along I am, and now I'm just like SEVEN AND A HALF MONTHS PREGNANT RARRR LEAVE ME ALONE I DON'T KNOW ANYMORE.
But I can tell you that in just under three weeks, I get to stop the progesterone. I picked up my last refill of that the other day. And in just under four weeks I get the cerclage taken out. At my OB appointment this week I definitely had my doctor WAY UP IN MY BITS THANK YOU to check on cervical position and cerclage status. Apparently everything feels good and we should have no trouble just taking the cerclage out in the office at 37 weeks.
After that comes out, who knows what'll happen. When she put it in, my MFM specialist warned me that some people get it taken out and basically proceed directly to hospital for baby-birthin' time without passing go, some people go home and don't start labor until like 41 weeks. Like many things with pregnancy, IT IS A MYSTERY.
I'm getting kind of ready to be done though.
I mean, I don't want the kid showing up until April. PLEASE, DARK LORD, NO. But while I certainly chose to get pregnant, and I do not in any way regret this choice, fucking a this shit is getting old. I'm kind of over the tireds. I'm kind of over the painful hips. I'm kind of over the nausea OH YES IT'S BACK, I'm way over nothing in the way of food or drink sounding or tasting particularly good, I'm so far fucking over the hormonal bullshit, I'm getting over the times that The Kid makes me even MORE nauseated as they burble around in there, I cannot wait to be able to stop taking the prenatal vitamins that make me gag more often than not STILL, I'm JUST ABOUT DONE.
Conveniently, I am just about done, but, you know.
Also about halfway through writing this I had to stop and eat dinner, and it dawned on me "HEY MAYBE THIS IS YOUR THYROID" and it actually probably is. While unrelenting tired, appetite problems, and mood swings are all pregnancy symptoms and are the short summary of this past week, cold spots on my thighs and ass are not - those are definitely my thyroid. So is the brain fog. YAY AUTOIMMUNE DISEASE yes I have emailed my doctor and I have lab orders to check shit already.
Meanwhile, I have gained weight (although now that I know my thyroid swung a bit I wonder how much is that HA HA GOOD TIMES) and am FINALLY above my starting weight. Barely. If I am doing the math right, I did gain more than the "recommended" pound per week, and I'm sure if my blood pressure weren't fucking terrific my doctors would be freaking out, but that shit is the lowest it's been at any point during this pregnancy for the past two weeks. Instead I got "oh your weight looks okay" - not "we're happy with your weight" any more, I NOTE.
Plus I have literally no swelling. Seriously, none. I'm trying really hard to not get a bad case of the smugs about it. At my appointment this week my OB complimented me "Oh how smart you got a pretty chain to put [your wedding ring] on", because the necklace I was wearing has a pretty silver circular pendant with a small diamond in it. So I held up my left hand with my wedding ring on it and waggled it and said "Oh no, I'm still wearing it". She was surprised. The damn thing is LOOSE on me. Like it spins gleefully around my finger all damn day when I wear it. Trying and mostly failing to not have the smugs.
Also at my appointment this week, I brought up "hey by the way I have thyroid disease and while I do plan on trying to breastfeed, there's not a lot of good information out there about it, do y'all have anything?" and apparently they have a lactation consultant on staff who may have some stuff. So my OB is giving her a heads up so she can do some additional research and I have an appointment with her later this month.
I'm sure my insurance will try to charge me a co-pay for that visit, even though according to the ACA they're not allowed to any more. They definitely charged me a co-pay for when I got tested for a UTI, so I get to fight with them about that. My insurance company also does not have my plan's summary of benefits and coverage available on their subscriber portal - those are required to be available to me by law. They also charged me a whole fuckton of money for my cerclage, for each of the ultrasounds I got, keep trying to charge me co-pays for pre-natal visits... basically, they are terrible and I am super-sick of having to fight them on everything. I can't even get an answer from them about whether I'm supposed to "pre-certify" for my hospital baby delivery, which I need to know for the hospital paperwork that I really need to send in ASAP. So that's fun.
In more annoying shit The Man and I started taking childbirth classes this week, starting with "Infant Care". If you look at the outline on the website, this class is supposed to be 2.5 hours all about "oh shit now I have the kid home WHAT DO I DO". So covering feeding, bathing, clothes, car seats, sleeping, etc. and so on. I know this shit, because I've literally been through it with a sister who is nearly 13 years younger than me, with all of the babies I've cared for over the years, etc. and so on, so I was like wev about it. But The Man has literally zero childcare experience, so we thought it would be a good idea to learn some of this from a neutral, non-hormonal third party.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH which, that was a good plan, if that were what the class had actually been. I ranted about this on Twitter for a while on Sunday, but basically, our instructor was terrible and kept talking about shit the nurses do in the hospital, there was less than half an hour of hands-on practice (which only covered bathing and changing a diaper), she covered approximately none of the stuff in the packets we were given (which was all of the stuff we were led to believe the class would be about), talked way too fast, went fifteen minutes over, did not give us evaluations to fill out, and the class was in a room that you HAD TO USE STAIRS TO GET IN TO. So I'm writing a very long letter to the department overseeing this about all of THAT. It was a waste of our $55 and a waste of our Sunday afternoon.
This Sunday starts our actual "SO YOU'RE GOING TO HAVE A BABY" classes, that cover birthing techniques, the hospital tour, all that happy crap. Hopefully it's significantly better.
Finally, do y'all even see my belly? I mean holy shit. Also it is definitely starting to move lower. And while it's not clear in the picture, my waist has been getting... flatter. Like, I used to have a really deep crease right through my belly button dividing my belly, and that's flattening out. Also The Kid has pretty consistently been head-down these past few weeks. I have a foot wedged up under my rib cage on my right side. SO PLEASANT, THANK YOU CHILD.
No comments:
Post a Comment