Various thoughts from a mother-to-be
Sorry. I never really figured out how to do cuts. Will rectify if someone wants to explain it to me...
So Daniel and I went in to the ultrasound today (well, technically yesterday. Sat 05/31). Apparently, the appointment I had made for Friday was for another exam/pee-in-a-cup fun time and a glucose test and also to get the proper forms and make the appointment with the clinic next door that does ultrasounds. Ugh. By the way, I hate glucose testing. (A) I had to drink nasty super-sweet drink that was no fun, (B) I then had to wait an hour before making my body feel right about it because I couldn't affect my blood sugar level, (C) it made the baby move around like crazy while also making me feel a little sick because of my system being less than stable anyway, (D) after the hour of feeling sick, getting kicked, and trying to find something to entertain myself and my aunt, they took a s***load of blood. 3 tubes, but one of the tubes wasn't sucking my blood right (gruesome, I know), and the nurse got it about 1/4 full before she decided she needed a new tube, (E) the nurse seriously messed up putting the needle in, so now I have a little scab on the inside of my arm which sucks, and the whole blood drawing process STUNG, (F) I always get terribly dizzy when they take blood draw (low blood pressure), and I had to sit like 3 times just to make it outside, (G) My blood didn't clot afterward for a REALLY long time. I had the blood drawn at 11 and when I took the bandage off at 2, the little gauze thing was soaked in blood that had slowly seeped out, and I had to hold my arm at an angle while it tried to clot properly, which only took a few minutes at that point, but still... I think I may have ended up disturbing the clotting, but it definitely took too long based on the blood on the gauze. Anyway, so I've decided glucose tests suck.
I didn't mention the before-the-appointment drama, though. I was feeling confident that Daniel would be able to get Friday off when I scheduled it, especially because he was asking relatively far in advance and he's been a total sport about their s*** job that they sent him all the way up to Mossyrock, WA (yeah, that's north of Kelso) to do a few days this week. Apparently, though, because he was a good sport about it, they decided to make him go up there Friday. He could have probably gotten the day off, still, but when you turn them down when they really need you, you don't get as many good shifts later. Makes sense in a way...
Anyway, so on Thursday around 8 we find out that Daniel has to work Friday (seriously sucks, right?), and we're thinking that Friday is the ultrasound, but we've put it off so long that I couldn't risk getting kicked out 2 weeks! So we decide that I'm going to go in, anyway, after much hemming and hawing about the whole thing. I was a little worked up, so I called my mom, mostly just to not stress Daniel with it any more (I could tell he was really feeling guilty, and I didn't want to make him feel worse). Well, of course, I should've known better.
Not five minutes after I get off the phone with her, my Uncle Leo calls. He adamantly insists that my Aunt Monica go with me because if something goes wrong, I'll really need someone there with me. WTF? Turns out, my mom, instead of talking to me about the whole thing, called my Uncle to send my Aunt with me. Well, instead of intensely offending both Leo and Monica, I went ahead and gave them the appointment information, insisted a few times that I would be just fine going in alone, and then hung up.
After which, of course, I promptly called my mom, who got SUPER defensive, acting like I was trying to make her out to be the "bad guy" and I wasn't being understanding at all. Thing is, this is completely not the way of it. I was actually very understanding of her situation. I get that she wanted to take care of me. I called her upset, too, so she probably felt a little extra-protective. I wasn't really bothered at all by her wanting me to bring someone with me. I just really wish she had talked to me about it instead of turning around and calling my pushy, self-assured uncle in to the rescue. I know that she was trying to take care of me. I know that she thought she was helping out. But what I wanted was my husband, not my uncle's wife. And if she had talked to me about it and given me a chance, I would have probably been willing to call up Roseanne or Mim or someone and see if they were available (I know Roseanne works Fridays, but I don't know when, or I'd have already done that, actually)...
Anyway, I think I got my point across to my mom by the end of the conversation. It's not the first time she's bypassed me when communication was important, but I really need it to stop, and I tried to explain that to her. What if I'd had an ultrasound and something had gone wrong? I think Aunt Monica's really wonderful, but I don't really want to share that moment with her. I can think of a lot of people I'd rather share that moment with, some who probably would have been able to go...
So, Monica met me at the appointment, waited an hour for me to finally discover that I wasn't getting the ultrasound Friday, after all, and then was nice enough to wait another hour so that I didn't have to entertain myself alone while I waited for my blood draw for the glucose test. After all of that, I brought her out to Red Robin as a "Thank you and I'm sorry" and because I was starving and off-balance in more ways than one and I didn't want to have to think about lunch when I got home. After RR, Monica drove me home and went back to Vancouver. It was probably noon at that point.
Oh, between the exam and the blood draw, I scheduled my ultrasound for (yay!) Saturday morning, 10am. I was told they could get me in earlier most likely if I showed up early.
After I got home, I was completely wiped out, so I sent out some emails, drank some milk, called Daniel, and laid down in bed. I fell asleep about 2:30, and woke up to a phone call from the ultrasound clinic, informing me that they had double-booked themselves for ALL of Saturday and needed me to reschedule for Monday. I asked the gentleman on the phone to please inform me if they got any openings for Saturday because my husband is on call weekdays and I couldn't plan on him being there then.
When Daniel got home (around 10pm...yeah, he was gone from like 6am until 10pm, no exaggeration), I explained the situation to him and pitched my idea. We go to the clinic early Saturday morning with a number of water bottles, healthy snacks for the day (bananas, dry cereal, etc), and a few books, and we wait as long as we have to for them to get us in. I knew we could but I wasn't sure if Daniel was up to it. He most definitely was, and we went in all prepared at about 9:15/9:20 Saturday morning.
They had us in for the ultrasound by 10:10. We were WAY over-prepared! And they were super understanding when we got there, too. Of course, I told them from the start that I knew it would be a wait and that we'd be waiting there until right before close if we had to and we were prepared, so I think that may have helped. I was very friendly about it.
Anyway, so all of that frustration ended in a very very happy way, with an ultrasound I couldn't believe!
You know how you see other people's u/s pics, and it just looks like a b&w little blob in the middle of the screen? Maybe a profile shot that looks indistinctly similar to human? Yeah, it's NOTHING like when it's your baby and you get to go in for the whole video and everything. I mean, they start out, and the first thing we see is the brain through the scull, and they can even point out the cerebellum! And then they show us the baby playing with his/her feet, and the fingers are so human, and the feet are so real! And then we see the spine, and the legs and arms and abdomen.... It was seriously intense! At one point, she was trying to give us a good profile shot of the baby, and all we could really see was the back of the scull, and then all of the sudden, the baby rolled over, and I swear, it was like it was looking right at us! And it was a baby but it wasn't just any baby, it was our baby ... and it looked so unique from every other baby u/s photo I've ever seen! I mean, I guess it could have just been motherly instinct, but this baby was distinctly our baby! Oh, and we say the heart beating, and listened to the blood flow through the umbilical cord, and it was just amazing! And I could feel andwatch the baby moving around at the same time!
I'm just still in total shock.
Daniel, less long-winded than me, put it fairly simply, "It was much more emotional than I expected."
We're having a baby. Like, a real, living, breathing, little person. And it's growing inside my uterus, right now. There is something really surreal about that, when it finally hits you...
So Daniel and I went in to the ultrasound today (well, technically yesterday. Sat 05/31). Apparently, the appointment I had made for Friday was for another exam/pee-in-a-cup fun time and a glucose test and also to get the proper forms and make the appointment with the clinic next door that does ultrasounds. Ugh. By the way, I hate glucose testing. (A) I had to drink nasty super-sweet drink that was no fun, (B) I then had to wait an hour before making my body feel right about it because I couldn't affect my blood sugar level, (C) it made the baby move around like crazy while also making me feel a little sick because of my system being less than stable anyway, (D) after the hour of feeling sick, getting kicked, and trying to find something to entertain myself and my aunt, they took a s***load of blood. 3 tubes, but one of the tubes wasn't sucking my blood right (gruesome, I know), and the nurse got it about 1/4 full before she decided she needed a new tube, (E) the nurse seriously messed up putting the needle in, so now I have a little scab on the inside of my arm which sucks, and the whole blood drawing process STUNG, (F) I always get terribly dizzy when they take blood draw (low blood pressure), and I had to sit like 3 times just to make it outside, (G) My blood didn't clot afterward for a REALLY long time. I had the blood drawn at 11 and when I took the bandage off at 2, the little gauze thing was soaked in blood that had slowly seeped out, and I had to hold my arm at an angle while it tried to clot properly, which only took a few minutes at that point, but still... I think I may have ended up disturbing the clotting, but it definitely took too long based on the blood on the gauze. Anyway, so I've decided glucose tests suck.
I didn't mention the before-the-appointment drama, though. I was feeling confident that Daniel would be able to get Friday off when I scheduled it, especially because he was asking relatively far in advance and he's been a total sport about their s*** job that they sent him all the way up to Mossyrock, WA (yeah, that's north of Kelso) to do a few days this week. Apparently, though, because he was a good sport about it, they decided to make him go up there Friday. He could have probably gotten the day off, still, but when you turn them down when they really need you, you don't get as many good shifts later. Makes sense in a way...
Anyway, so on Thursday around 8 we find out that Daniel has to work Friday (seriously sucks, right?), and we're thinking that Friday is the ultrasound, but we've put it off so long that I couldn't risk getting kicked out 2 weeks! So we decide that I'm going to go in, anyway, after much hemming and hawing about the whole thing. I was a little worked up, so I called my mom, mostly just to not stress Daniel with it any more (I could tell he was really feeling guilty, and I didn't want to make him feel worse). Well, of course, I should've known better.
Not five minutes after I get off the phone with her, my Uncle Leo calls. He adamantly insists that my Aunt Monica go with me because if something goes wrong, I'll really need someone there with me. WTF? Turns out, my mom, instead of talking to me about the whole thing, called my Uncle to send my Aunt with me. Well, instead of intensely offending both Leo and Monica, I went ahead and gave them the appointment information, insisted a few times that I would be just fine going in alone, and then hung up.
After which, of course, I promptly called my mom, who got SUPER defensive, acting like I was trying to make her out to be the "bad guy" and I wasn't being understanding at all. Thing is, this is completely not the way of it. I was actually very understanding of her situation. I get that she wanted to take care of me. I called her upset, too, so she probably felt a little extra-protective. I wasn't really bothered at all by her wanting me to bring someone with me. I just really wish she had talked to me about it instead of turning around and calling my pushy, self-assured uncle in to the rescue. I know that she was trying to take care of me. I know that she thought she was helping out. But what I wanted was my husband, not my uncle's wife. And if she had talked to me about it and given me a chance, I would have probably been willing to call up Roseanne or Mim or someone and see if they were available (I know Roseanne works Fridays, but I don't know when, or I'd have already done that, actually)...
Anyway, I think I got my point across to my mom by the end of the conversation. It's not the first time she's bypassed me when communication was important, but I really need it to stop, and I tried to explain that to her. What if I'd had an ultrasound and something had gone wrong? I think Aunt Monica's really wonderful, but I don't really want to share that moment with her. I can think of a lot of people I'd rather share that moment with, some who probably would have been able to go...
So, Monica met me at the appointment, waited an hour for me to finally discover that I wasn't getting the ultrasound Friday, after all, and then was nice enough to wait another hour so that I didn't have to entertain myself alone while I waited for my blood draw for the glucose test. After all of that, I brought her out to Red Robin as a "Thank you and I'm sorry" and because I was starving and off-balance in more ways than one and I didn't want to have to think about lunch when I got home. After RR, Monica drove me home and went back to Vancouver. It was probably noon at that point.
Oh, between the exam and the blood draw, I scheduled my ultrasound for (yay!) Saturday morning, 10am. I was told they could get me in earlier most likely if I showed up early.
After I got home, I was completely wiped out, so I sent out some emails, drank some milk, called Daniel, and laid down in bed. I fell asleep about 2:30, and woke up to a phone call from the ultrasound clinic, informing me that they had double-booked themselves for ALL of Saturday and needed me to reschedule for Monday. I asked the gentleman on the phone to please inform me if they got any openings for Saturday because my husband is on call weekdays and I couldn't plan on him being there then.
When Daniel got home (around 10pm...yeah, he was gone from like 6am until 10pm, no exaggeration), I explained the situation to him and pitched my idea. We go to the clinic early Saturday morning with a number of water bottles, healthy snacks for the day (bananas, dry cereal, etc), and a few books, and we wait as long as we have to for them to get us in. I knew we could but I wasn't sure if Daniel was up to it. He most definitely was, and we went in all prepared at about 9:15/9:20 Saturday morning.
They had us in for the ultrasound by 10:10. We were WAY over-prepared! And they were super understanding when we got there, too. Of course, I told them from the start that I knew it would be a wait and that we'd be waiting there until right before close if we had to and we were prepared, so I think that may have helped. I was very friendly about it.
Anyway, so all of that frustration ended in a very very happy way, with an ultrasound I couldn't believe!
You know how you see other people's u/s pics, and it just looks like a b&w little blob in the middle of the screen? Maybe a profile shot that looks indistinctly similar to human? Yeah, it's NOTHING like when it's your baby and you get to go in for the whole video and everything. I mean, they start out, and the first thing we see is the brain through the scull, and they can even point out the cerebellum! And then they show us the baby playing with his/her feet, and the fingers are so human, and the feet are so real! And then we see the spine, and the legs and arms and abdomen.... It was seriously intense! At one point, she was trying to give us a good profile shot of the baby, and all we could really see was the back of the scull, and then all of the sudden, the baby rolled over, and I swear, it was like it was looking right at us! And it was a baby but it wasn't just any baby, it was our baby ... and it looked so unique from every other baby u/s photo I've ever seen! I mean, I guess it could have just been motherly instinct, but this baby was distinctly our baby! Oh, and we say the heart beating, and listened to the blood flow through the umbilical cord, and it was just amazing! And I could feel andwatch the baby moving around at the same time!
I'm just still in total shock.
Daniel, less long-winded than me, put it fairly simply, "It was much more emotional than I expected."
We're having a baby. Like, a real, living, breathing, little person. And it's growing inside my uterus, right now. There is something really surreal about that, when it finally hits you...