pregnancy hormones

This is your brain. This is my brain.

I didn't really believe in "pregnancy brain." I figured it must just be stress or fatigue. No way hormones can make swiss cheese out of an otherwise able mind.

I have come around and these are the facts:

exhibit 1) last month
Lizzy: "Do you get to have recess in highschool?"
Ariana: "I am afraid not. They don't have..." (blank, all blank, all words gone) "...those things that children play on with swings and slides and stuff."
Lizzy: "A playground?"
Ariana: "Yeah, playgrounds. Highschools don't have playgrounds."
Lizzy looked at me incredulously, only slightly less dissappointed in high school that she was now in me.

Other words that have slipped my mind:
Bronchi
Tortilla
Dresser

exhibit 2) last Wednesday morning
Derick: "Wasn't it Enrichment meeting last night?"
Ariana: "Aw crap!"
Blah, Blah, Blah. The conversation moves to the tasks of the day.
In the middle of my to do list...
Derick: "Don't you have a doctor's appointment at 1:30?"
Ariana: "Aw crap!"

Other appointments that have slipped my mind:
A mandatory work meeting
A birthday

exhibit 3) yesterday
noon:
Ariana: "What should we have with the pot roast?"
Derick: "I don't care."
Ariana: "I could make some biscuits."
Derick: " That sounds good, but they are a lot of work. We still have those refrigerated ones. They probably need used."

dinner:
Derick: "Where are the biscuits?"
Ariana: "Still in the refrigerator."

for my personal protection

It's always wonderful when your husband tells you he thought of you today and bought you something...

well...wonderful, until he hands you pepper spray. I suppose on some morbid level the gesture is still romantic.

I am sure that if I ever were actually confronted by a knife weilding psychopath, I would more likely spray myself in the eye, than effectively thwart any attempt to steal our precious baby.

Worse, I will probably never encounter said psychopath, forget I carry pepper spray, and attempt to board a plane someday. I can just see it now. Our toddler will be screaming from his stroller as his mother is tackled to the ground by three hefty security officers.


Thanks honey.

Dear Babyboy,

Last night you were finally still.

Over the weeks since your first flutterings, I have gotten accustomed to dropping off as you gear up for your nightly acrobatics. (BTW, that is not a trampoline. That is my bladder. For real.) Your favorite move is the lap swim from one side of my uterus to the other.

But last night you were still, and I didn't sleep a wink.

I gently whispered and prodded for you to move so that I would know you were okay, and nothing. I wished you were out already so I could see the rise and fall of your chest to know that you were still breathing.

Then it occured to me that once you do arrive, I will worry about what you are putting in your mouth, whether or not you looked both ways before you crossed the street, whether you pick nice friends...don't even get my started on getting a driver's license!

I will try not to be one of those hovering mothers who peels the skin off your hands with so many applications of waterless handcleaner, but I already love you so much. Right now, you are the most protected I will ever be able to make you. I hope, at least occasionally, you will nestle into my warm belly a let me know you are still okay.

love,
mom


P.S. Today, you are definitely making up for lost time. GOOD GRIEF!

How Naughty Jack Caused Me to Roll the Car

DISCLAIMER: I AM OKAY, THE BABY IS OKAY, BAILEY IS OKAY, JACK IS OKAY, my car is not okay

I had a moment to pause as I lay there on my side staring out the passenger-side window, now above me, breathing the acrid smoke of the recently deployed airbag, wondering "How did I get here?"

It started with our first deep snow. At least a foot. Our dog Jack, who had some trouble when we first brought him home, has successfully urinated outside all summer and fall. Snow up to his eyeballs seems to have set him back. I don't blame him really. If I had two inch legs, I wouldn't want to squat in the cold to do my business either. But, we can't have pee all over the floor, so he was relegated to his kennel. By the time, I got home from work that day, I could smell the aroma of his urine-soaked doggy-bed all the way down stairs. I am sure he had been saving it up. The thought did cross my mind that I probably shouldn't put such a bulky item in our second-hand washer. I did anyway, only to find in the spinner, that would no longer spin, half-washed, green stuffing and 20 gallons of water that would not drain.

Derick has been working so hard that the washer would just have to wait. Thankfully, Derick's dad came out this last Saturday to diagnose the problem and locate a new washer belt. As penance for my misdeeds, I thought I would be helpful and pick up the belt before Derick got home from work. I loaded up the dogs, filled the car with gas, and started down the highway. Drifted snow covered spots of the black-top, but I was just congratulating myself on how well I could drive in the snow. Next thing I knew, I encountered black ice, spun 360 degrees, and ended up in the ditch with my tires in the air.

So there I was, still in my seat belt, covered in peanuts from the canister I keep in the car, wondering. I looked into the back seat to see Bailey wondering too, terrified and wondering. I looked at Jack. The only thought that registered on his face was, "OOH peanuts!"

What's a better word for dilemma?

Last night I was studying for yet another test...well actually my mom called...so, I was supposed to be studying for yet another test, but was happily distracted into gushing about the look on Derick's face when the OB put the Doppler on my belly and heard the rapid thumping of our baby's heart (supreme joy)...But, that is not what this entry is about. Bear with me.

For sometime now as I work in the hospital and definitely through the election, I have pondered over what a huge dilemma the health care crisis is (dilemma is too soft a word, but I haven't got a better one). I always thought that if I could be elected president, I would really have some progressive yet tough answers for the country's ills. However, when it comes to health care, I really see no clear way ahead. I definitely do not think that a more socialized program would work very well for anybody, and the system is certainly broken for many average citizens as it now stands.

Yesterday, we had gotten the first real good snow and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees. So, last night I was busy not studying, when a furious pounding nearly came through the front door. Bailey nearly went through the door himself. Derick was still at school, so you can imagine the fear I must have communicated to my mother at the other end of the phone. Still on the phone, I flipped on the porch light and peeped through the blinds. I was met by the anxious stare of a long-haired, rough-skinned man and a young girl with abrasions and lacerations all over her face. For a split second, I imagined a scene from every terrible thriller movie that I should have never seen. Still, I opened the door.

Apparently, this was my neighbor down the road and one of his daughters and they had just rolled their Jeep twenty feet into the cornfield after hitting a patch of black ice. They had climbed out of the wreckage and ours was the second house they had tried. The girl had lost her shoes somewhere. She couldn't have been more than twelve. It is strange how first impressions change in an instant. Whatever I had thought of this man before, I now saw him as a father whose skin was hardened by hard labor in a blue-collar, benefit-scant job that he may have recently been layed-off from. He had just smashed his family's vital mode of transportation. The girl had a nasty gash somewhere on her thigh that was soaking through her jeans. Most of the injuries to her face were superficial, but the deepening bruise across her nose was an ominous sign for me. I asked her father if he would like me to call an ambulance. He quietly said no. I wanted to get to a better look at what was under the bloodstain widening on her jeans. I was about to rip the small hole larger when the girl said she would rather take them off instead. (Was this her only pair of jeans?) Indeed, it was a nasty gash, and though I am no doctor, I have had enough stitches to know that this needed stitches. Still, the father sent the ambulance that arrived anyway away without them so much as looking at the child. In my clinical picture, she definitely needed stitches, possibly an x-ray and a head CT.

I know what this father was thinking though. I am sure he wants the best for his children, but ambulance rides and emergency rooms and diagnostic testing are out of the range of his family budget on a good day--and this was not a good day. How did we arrive at the day when an honest hard-working father has to decide between decent medical care and putting a roof over his children's head and food on the table?

Derick has a good job and good health care coverage. (100% maternity) We have been blessed. But what was I to do for this child? I butterflied the wound and performed a simple neuro check. What more could I do?

bread baking

That's right folks! We have a bun in the oven!

Our "bun" is still very tiny, eight weeks, but it makes me awfully uncomfortable. Luckily I have not had the immobilizing nausea. Instead, I have terrible gas. Yeah, the kind that runs my husband and the dog out of the bed! I haven't been craving anything specific yet, but I most certainly cannot handle certain smells. Bless his heart, the other day, Derick asked if I wanted to make cheesy brats for dinner--As if! He is beside himself and has taken his protectiveness to a whole new level. I try to be patient and smile.

I sort of freaked out a little at first. I figured out how to take the pregnancy test and read the results, neither being an easy task. Now what to do next? I was at a total loss. I don't have OB nursing until next semester! Luckily my OBGYN nurse is very patient and I am sure I am not the first totally clueless mom-to-be she has seen. Pretty much, I don't need to do anything. Babies have a funny way of just sort of getting what they need.

On a final note, this bun will be ready in June. As it turns out, the Lord has answered all our prayers. I will graduate in May, just in time, and I will still have a child before I turn 30--barely!

what is up with all the wild animals?

so having a family of racoons move into the tree outside and make nightly raids on our garbage wasn't enough.



We, Derick and I, and his brother Ben, and his wife Emily, and their son Nathaniel, spent Friday night cleaning out what was left in mom's house so that the Gregory's can move in next weekend. We were just finishing up, and I went around the house turning off all of the lights. As I cut the lights in the living room, I happened to notice something dark perched on top of a curtain rod. I thought to myself, "Now, who would stick something up there?"

Then, to my horror, I realized that it might possibly be something living perched up there! I cautiously turned back on the light and found this little guy who stared at me with his big yellow eyes as if to say: "Who do you think you are flipping those light on and off?!"

What next?

When one of the little girls in swim class this week was asked to name something she should not play with at home, she responded, "Tigers--they will bite you."

I hope I never awaken to find biting tigers in my house.