Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Poor Pregnant Sick Me

This is a post full of whining. Oh right, that's pretty normal for around these parts so I shouldn't have to preface it.

I'm sick. And I'm pregnant. you know that that means? LIMITED DRUGS! I love my cold medications, and all the ones I usually reach for are off limits during this journey I'm on. Sigh. I'm currently working on cold #3 of this pregnancy and #4 of the cold/flu season and actually #1 was in June so that's BEFORE the season even started and it was the worst of all.

Started out as a tickling cough, 2 days later insane sore throat and prolonged coughing fits, 2 days later add head congestion, and then .... the dreaded YELLOW MUCUS coming from everywhere I turned.

I am doing all the things I'm supposed to do:
Resting as much as the Mr. Mucus allows
Sinus Rinse
Lots of Hot/Warm fluids
Steamy deep breathing sessions in the shower/bath or over the stove
Salt water gargling
Eating well

Since Mr Mucus turned colors over the weekend I decided it was time to see the doctor. I'm not one to go to the doctor unless really warranted and this pregnancy warranted the trip. My OB was out today, so I saw another in the group who I've seen before so I knew he was REALLY sensitive to the emotions of Women's Health and would not fault me for coming in with a cold (he had helped me through my miscarriage).

He was pretty much awesome and convinced me that taking a Codeine cough syrup was the way to go. I picked up my prescription and a refill for my inhaler should the need arise during a coughing fit. Now, 2 doses later, I'm not convinced of its effectiveness. Still coughing. Have managed to give myself (or maybe the baby started it) sore ribs, and my back decided that coughing is a good trigger for spasming. The coughing has even been triggering fun puking... good thing I had kind of gotten used to that a few months ago.

I'm falling apart people!

Oh yea, and I'm supposed to be packing some everyday to be ready for the big move on Sunday. Yea right.

CRAP - I hear something. Eric's making sinusy noises. CRAP CRAP CRAP!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Location Location Location

Next weekend we are moving and I'm sort of happy about it. Moving to be closer to my office and therefore a large part of my daily life will finally be closer to my impending new family. As I've complained about thoroughly over the years, I have a LONG ASS COMMUTE (3-5 hours daily). I live in an area of the country which is CONGESTED, not LA congested but pretty damn bad and sprawling out from a few major cities.

I grew up on one side of a bay and have lived within a 10 mile radius all my life, but I have worked in or near one of the major cities on the OTHER side of the bay for over 10 years. And the headquarters of the company I work for is way down at the southern tip of that bay in another one of the major cities and I'm expected to go there occasionally and never know if/when my position will be moved there. Lots of people live in one city or area of the bay but work in another so the highways and bridges are therefore full of people all trying to get to and from the same places around the same time of day which equals... that long ass commute. Whether by train or car, my commute is long. When I take it, public transportation may reduce the insanity, it's still a huge part of my day and daily expense.

Because I want those 3-5 hours back to spend with my upcoming new family, we are moving to the SAME CITY as my current office. We are renting a place which isn't perfect but the location to my office can't be beat. The rental comes with a few cons which we will just have to wait to see how they play out. Yes I'm going to focus on the negatives here because I need to get it out and really the main pro is the main con too:

- Virgin Landlord/Owner: very clearly has never been a landlord before but thankfully he hired a real estate agent to help him but mostly we'll work with the landlord directly. We've met once, and he was nice but seemed green. He agreed to take some things away we don't want/need, to finish up some repairs and to install a water line for our fridge so I still get ice and filtered water (yay!) instead of using his smaller, older and honestly, stinky and moldy fridge (Eric didn't see my issue with it but he never looked inside). One nice point, he is going to give us the keys a week early so we can move in over the weekend even though our lease begins on the first.

- Kitchen: you might know that I love to cook and well, this place has a tiny kitchen lacking much in the way of amenities and things like counter space and storage, and the lay out is not ideal. It'll work out but we're going to put some money into it in the way of IKEA furniture and someone is going to have dishpan hands and it's not going to be me (yea right).

- Color: Said Virgin Landlord does not know the way of the neutral color palate for a rental. The interior walls are newly and beautifully (craftsmanship-wise) painted lime green and he bought and installed curtains for most of the windows, all of which are a print of blue of some sort. Yes, lime green and blue.... everywhere. And no, he didn't save any of the paint for touch ups nor remembers the color code or brand of paint for us to redo his work should we choose to reduce the pain. I am VERY emotionally effected by color, so we'll see how I deal with this one. Oh and I won't even go into the newly painted exterior color (ok yes I will). Think poo. Poo of someone who ate a jar of mustard and a can of peas. Yay! Awesome location!

- Shared space and utilities: There is a "cottage" in the small backyard which is rented out to a separate tenant. We will be sharing utilities and common space with this person whom we've never met. The lease doesn't have as solid of terms as I'd like in the way of how the sharing happens so that was probably stupidity shining through on my part. The current tenant has given notice, so who knows what that will do to things. Maybe the new person will be an awesome new friend of our new family and really easy to work with in terms of the utilities and backyard.

- Doubled Housing/Living expense: Our current place is cheap. cheap cheap cheap. But we live to our means and my never seeming to end student loans takes up a large chunk of my net salary. And somehow, thanks to the market and plummeting interest rates, this area is now even cheaper for those lucky people who buy here now. By moving to the other side of the bay alone, we are increasing our cost of living a LOT, plus things just cost more over there. Have I also mentioned we are having a baby and I hear they are expensive too. Guess taking my lunch to work will no longer be a good thing to do and more a necessity.

- Location: The city in which I work is the city in which I work. Work sometimes is not the best part of my day so the city in which I do it can have negative feelings associated with it. For years I have gone to this city to do ... work, and then I get to go home and live. See what I mean?
Plus this city has a completely different climate than where I call home so some adjusting will need to happen.
And its not the best area. As in most cities, it has its good and its not as good areas, with many different socioeconomic groups and cultures which I like and then again don't like all the time. The wrong side of the tracks means something here. Yes, call me a yuppy snob but I don't think I used to care as much about this sort of thing except when I lived alone and now with the thoughts of baby on my mind. There is no cute downtown to stroll along with the stroller, but there is some shopping nearby so that's helpful but I've been spoiled by living in a fairly affluent area where even the Target is nicer than most.
Oh and there is a major airport nearby too.... with a flight path for the international huge jumbo jets which you can tell the name of the airline who owns the plane because you can READ it from the ground. The path goes over my office so I'm sort of used to it, but we'll be waiting to see what that sounds like from our new place.
And while my commute is shrinking to almost nothing, Eric's is growing. True he doesn't have to drive for his work everyday, he still does have a lot of driving to do to get to clients for meetings and installs which are all on that other side of the bay.

And my biggest con is also... LOCATION but for a very different reason.
I am essentially moving away from home for the first time. Sure I moved out of my parents house many years ago. I have moved from rental to rental to owning to rental to rental to rental to owning, but never left the comfort of a 10 mile radius from my parents and the house I lived years 0-24. I know where I live. I know where to get things, how long it takes to get there and who to call when I need help.
Here, my mom comes by for lunch or to play a game almost every Sunday on her way home from church. She takes care of my cats when we go away. She brings me soup my father makes for me when I'm sick. She's my mom and she's here, and I'm moving over there.
Eric's plant nursery, part of the core of his business is at my parent's home. He goes there to care for his plants, to visit with my parents and has dinner and conversation with them far more often then I do. And I often get the benefit of leftovers my parents send home with him to be waiting for me after I get home from my long ass commute.

I am finally moving away from my parents.

And some people may not get this, but the biggest con is that I'm moving away from my friends. My core strength is my friends. While my parents are big, in my life my friends have been bigger. They listen to me, they help me cope and they give me so much more comfort and knowledge and help than they will ever know. Sure we are already spread out in the area, and the majority of our communication is and will remain via the Internet, but right now I know they are all within a 30 minute drive. And while I'm not moving out of state, I am moving at minimum 1.5 hours away so there will no longer be last minute lunches or shopping trips or visits. They have busy lives too and we already have infrequent times we spent together. I had just hoped that this new phase of my life would have more of an ever present, as in in-person, support of my girlfriends who mostly are all already going through this journey.

While my support network is not in this new town, we'll make due. I guess. We have to. It's for the good of our new family.

Saturday, February 20, 2010

Getting down to counting on fingers

Counting down to events in one's life has always been a big deal. As a kid we were excited about our birthdays or Christmas or Summer vacation. As adults we have graduation, weddings, jobs ending or starting, vacations (again) and then there are births and all those countdowns that go with them...

In 11 weeks...
27 Weeks down and 11 more to go for this impending birth. No that doesn't add up to the traditional 40 but this baby is coming at 38 weeks at the latest.

Why you may ask?

Well back here, I had a uterine surgery to remove some fun fibroids which were threatening to drain me of my blood and almost ruined my wedding, not to mention gave me a lovely plump 4-5 months pregnant look. Evil, benign things. Because of how the surgery went down, I should not go into labor as my uterus likely couldn't handle the stress of it and might rupture. Seeing as we don't want that to happen... you know, the whole death thing...this baby is coming by C-Section at the latest on May 6th. That's her drop dead delivery date. Oh, that doesn't sound good, so let's go with Project Management terms...her Commit Date!

I'll be having an Amniocentesis at week 36 to check on development and if she appears ready, she'll deliver at 37 weeks (10 flippin' weeks away!.... I can count that on my FINGERS!), and if she needs a tad more time she gets 7 more days to hit her commit date and then she's coming out!

That's right, this ride of pregnancy apparently ends with a baby in arms and me a mother. Funny how I knew that, but am just starting to actually KNOW that, and I probably won't really know it until a week into the fun new stage of my life which is parenthood. Holy CRAP! I'm going to BE a mother on Mother's Day this year (May 9th in the US if you haven't looked it up yet).

In 7 weeks...
I'm to going on MATERNITY LEAVE! Oh how I wish for this day to come quickly as I am uncomfortable, hardly sleep (writing this at 3am), am sick for the 3rd time this pregnancy (thank you compromised immune system), my pelvis hasn't gotten the word that I'm having a C-section so every step I take is painful as it "loosens", and well work? I don't talk about that here but I'll be just fine to let my controlling ways go aside or redirected for a few or 6 months (or as long as we can afford it). 7 more weeks. I can make it 7 more weeks.

In 3+ weeks...
We are being blessed by 2 Baby Showers being thrown for us. One by my wonderful co-workers and another by my beautiful girlfriends. I guess I should actually put some stuff on those gift registries because apparently people like to give us stuff. WOO!! I just wanted to celebrate our new stage of life with friends and to eat cupcakes (I am dreaming about Lizzie's Coconut Cupcakes daily!) but the generosity and excitement of our friends is overwhelmingly awesome and they want to know what we might want to help us with the world of baby.

The baby registry thing has me baffled a little because while I realize the market of baby stuff is huge and our loved ones want to buy us things to help us with this journey, I am also full on down with the land of hand-me-downs because #1 - it's less stuff going to landfills, #2 - if my friends used it and loved it and want us to use it too, then its usefulness has already been proven and I don't have to do the research!, #3 - lots of times the stuff GOES BACK to them so I don't have to then find a new home for ALL THE STUFF! (I like to live with less stuff in general, idealistically not always in practice, and I realize babies come with stuff, so easy ways for stuff going away is good!).

Alas, while I am having a tough time learning all there is to learn about the stuff which helps with baby, and having to come to terms that this is really happening, its actually kind of fun to peruse the shopping sites and reviews and picking out the things which will soon decorate our new life (and living room, and car, and...)

In 2 weeks...
We are going to our 2nd of a series of baby related classes. We went to a Mid-Term pregnancy class many months ago which was informative but nothing new was learned which I didn't already get from the Internet or books. This next class is BREASTFEEDING. The first of the practical classes on our schedule. Apparently stuff will come from my chest and there will be a baby who wants to suck on me and will be nourished and neither of us will know exactly what to do and we're going to learn some info on how that all happens. CRAZY and beautiful and amazing and did I mention crazy?

Sure we girls learn to deal with the oddity which is our period and we get use to that idea fairly quickly, then this pregnancy thing takes over our lives and our bodies and we learn and adjust but never REALLY know what its like until we're living it, and then after that comes breastfeeding which to me is still weird to think about. So yea... classes, teach me, show me the way!

In 1 week...
We move. Yes move. We are renting a place closer to my work so I can cut down my commute. Improving ones quality of life suddenly becomes more important when things like babies come into the picture. My commute will essentially go from 3-5 hours per day depending on traffic or if I go by train, to 10-30 minutes which I can WALK if I so choose to do (to leave Eric home with the 4 door car and the baby, because a 4 door car is better than a work truck for baby's safety and my sanity - C you know what I'm talking about!).

The short sale of our townhouse is progressing and while we will have an overlap of mortgage and rent payments (and utilities, we keep forgetting the cost of those utilities) for a few months, this move is going to make the end of my pregnancy a little bit easier... sort of (I'll go into the reasons of that Sort Of in a different post) and postpartum breastfeeding while working and balancing the support of a business owning husband who will also be at least part-time daddy daycare and struggles with depression life WAY easier.

So this weekend, we PACK. Holy Crap, change is happening.

The countdowns of many big changes are getting really close to their ends, and one big one's beginning. Change is good. Change is good...