I am 28 weeks today. I have officially hit the third trimester. Less than three months to my due date and I am starting to feel like I am running out of time to prepare to be a mom. I felt like just a few weeks ago, it seemed like an eternity to my due date, but once we hit September something flipped inside me...I think it is the suffix of the month, it sounds too much like December.
I am the type of person who when I start to feel rushed or am under a time crunch, I do kick it into a higher gear, but usually I start doing things way lower on the priority list, like make a music playlist for labor or scrub the walls in my house (I like things clean but I definitely think I am "nesting," whatever that means, because I recognize and admit that that type of cleanliness is weird) rather than find a pediatrician for my baby or sign up for a childbirth class. Needless to say, I did not have an answer for either of those issues when my midwife asked Adam and I about our plans regarding those topics. I did call about a childbirth class today, but I might be out of luck. The ones for my due date are full. Apparently, you are supposed to sign up for those in the fourth month of pregnancy. What? Who thinks that far ahead? But they might be able to squeeze us in. We'll see. Luckily, Adam and I have been reading about the Bradley method at night before we fall asleep. I think we have been averaging about a page a night. So maybe we will be finished with the book by the time our next baby gets here.
Recently, I had the joy of doing my glucose tolerance test. It is a very crappy test, in more than one sense of the word. For one, I don't think it is very accurate in predicting a high risk pregnancy and two, it is no fun at all. But maybe I am just bitter because I failed (by two points), so I had to go back for the three hour test. They say you can eat breakfast, but I think they are wrong. I knew I shouldn't have had that bowl of oatmeal, but I thought the sugar drink would hurt my stomach (and it did anyway). And if I would have fixed it myself, I definitely wouldn't have put any honey in it, but my sweet husband had it ready for me when I came down stairs. I think that damn honey sent me over the edge. Two points!
I thought about declining the test, but I didn't want my chart to say "difficult" patient, so I went in for my second testing. It started with fasting. That is just mean to forbid a pregnant woman to eat. Then you have to be at the hospital for at least three hours, but I am on top of things so I brought my to do list. When I got there I had to drink twice as much of the sugary nastiness and got my blood drawn. Then I went to the waiting room to start knocking stuff off my list in between my hourly blood draws. I think I made it about five minutes before I felt like I was in my first trimester again. I thought I was gonna vom all over the waiting room and my body felt all out of whack. I tried to pull it together and talk myself out of being sick. This is good practice for labor. So I tried relaxing, I tried some different breathing techniques, I tried visualizing happy things.....when I looked at the clock again. It had only been seven minutes. Then I started to panic "Oh God! How am I gonna get through labor? I can't even make it through a crappy lab test that only lasts three hours!" I think I was easy to read or maybe I lost all my color, but I promptly got escorted to the sick chair with my feet propped up and ice chips to munch on. I didn't think I was going to make it, but I did. But my advice to all you pregnant ladies out there, whatever they tell you, don't eat breakfast before your one hour glucose tolerance test, because you do not want to go back for the next one! It is brutal.
As far as employment goes, I recently acquired several temporary positions, which is great because neither relocating or preparing to have a baby is easy on the wallet (especially if you and your spouse have both been students for the last chunk of your life). It is not much, but it is just enough to give us a little bit of breathing room. I recently started substitute teaching and nursing in three counties in the upper valley. I have worked six half days as a school nurse, which is fun and scary. Most of it is very low stress...handing out band aids and tooth boxes, giving meds, pampering...but I still have this underlying fear. I don't know if it is because I am a newer nurse or if it is just nerve racking to be the only person with any medical credentials in a building - especially when there are a lot of sick kids at some of the schools with pretty significant health histories. If there is an emergency, I am the go to person, I am the medical professional....Lord help me. Other than that, school nursing is a cake walk and I love kids.
My favorite job to get called for is still technically a school nurse substitute position, but it is with a little girl who needs one on one nursing care full time because of all her medical issues. We are buds already. I love spending time with her. And I think Adam and I might have a budding friendship with her parents, who are really cool and fun. They are new to the area too. So we will see how that develops. You know I am always on the look at for friends.
I also have filled in once as a substitute teacher, which a t first I was dreading, but it was actually really fun. I was the teacher for a fourth grade class last Thursday. The schools up here all look so quaint and New Englandy. And the population of student here is definitely different than the ones I am used to working with. First of all, more than half of the kids were decked out in Patagonia with a kind of granola/yuppie look. During snack time these are a few of the conversations I over heard, "How am I supposed to eat my carrots without any hummus?!" and "Your mom should make better decisions about the tuna she buys because fisherman of some companies don't care if dolphins get caught in their nets and they let them die a slow and painful death." These kids were cracking me up.
I only made one kid cry. And I felt horrible. Adam said I might have scarred him for life. I finally asked him to step outside to discuss his sassafras attitude. I liked him but he was my trouble maker all day. I could see tears start to well up in his eyes, but he held it in until we walked back in the class. He bumped his knee on a table on the way back in and lost it, balling in front of the whole class. He just wanted to be left alone, so I kept teaching to distract the other kids, but I felt so bad:( I hope I didn't scar him for life.
My last piece of temp work is working as a flu clinic nurse in VT. I technically should have started today, but getting my Vermont nursing license, a process that was supposed to be so quick, has turned out to drag on and on. So here I am three weeks later trying to straighten everything out. Really it is my nursing schools fault. All they had to do was fill out this one simple little piece of paper and mail to the VT board of nursing. They took their sweet time to begin with. It finally got there today, but apparently they did not read the directions properly and filled out part of the form wrong. Uhhh! I am so annoyed. So who knows when I will finally get my Vermont nursing license and be able to start my flu clinic job.
Back to the friendship topic. I almost ruined one last Sunday. I went over to my friend Megan's after church to learn how to can tomatoes. She is probably one of my favorite people I have met here. Her and her hubby were pretty much born and raised here, so they are a wealth of information. Plus they are super farmy. Not trendy farmy, but real farmy. I love learning stuff from them. Unfortunately, they just informed me that the farmers almanac (a type of witch craft that always accurately predicts the weather for each season) predicts that this winter will be exceptionally cold with minimal snow. I am scared. Anyways, here is how I almost wrecked our friendship or rather how Jamie almost wrecked our friendship.
Megan and Tim both know Jamie and know that she is a great dog and said to bring her over. They were just gonna leave there un-neutered male dog tied up at first so he didn't drive Jamie crazy. So when I pulled up I saw Megan standing next to her pup Max who was tied up to a tree (I assumed mainly so he wouldn't bother Jamie) on the other side of their yard next to all the gardens. I did ask if it was okay for Jamie to be off the leash when I pulled up and she said yeah. So we were walking across her yard and as soon as we got close I heard their chickens. I totally forgot about them and she didn't seem worried so I was guessing they were in a fully enclosed coup. But when we rounded the corner Jamie saw some chickens running around the same time I saw them...and she was off.
Jamie has been around chickens before and other small animals. She usually likes to annoy them by chasing them or following them to close. She has never killed anything in her life, but she does love the chase. But there were so many of them I didn't want to take any chances so I called her to put her leash on her. She came and I grabbed her collar, but then the chickens started getting all loud and the group outside the coup ran by and Jamie slipped out of her collar and disappeared behind them into a row of vegetables. Crap!
The next thing I see is the crops next to the chicken coup shaking and the little pack of chickens jump out of the garden and over the side of the coup that was knocked almost all the way to the ground (completely unnoticed by me before this). Then I see my dog soaring through the air over the fence into the coup. I about had a heart attack as she circled the coup whipping the group of about 15-20 chickens into a squaking, flapping, blur of feathers frenzy. I tried to jump the fence, but kept getting my foot caught. Megan was on the other side and got to Jamie just as she pinned a chicken to the ground with her mouth. She wasn't it biting it, but I thought the poor chicken was going to die of fright (I think that really happens). We got her out and he tied her up, but I felt horrible. Megan wasn't mad at all, she told me she didn't think about it all and not to worry about it. But at first her hubby was pissed at me because those are his babies, but he forgave me quickly. Uhhh! I felt horrible! I am a total peace maker and people-pleaser and I hate making people mad. But thank God Jamie did not kill one of their chickens.
On a lighter friendship note, Labor Day weekend was amazing because Sarah, Adrienne and Michelle came up for our third annual girls weekend. I showed them all around my new hometown. We caught up, cooked together, and laughed til we cried. It was so refreshing! I took them to Burlington where we went to the Green Mountain Coffee Factory, the Ben and Jerry's factory, and then just walked around the cute little down town area for the day. I told them my dream/fantasy where we would go into Ben and Jerry's and they would tell me how much they love pregnant women and know they need ice cream and send me home with an armful of all my favorite pints (yes, I am still craving ice cream). Unfortunately, you only get one tiny little sample at the end. But Sarah told our tour guide about my fantasy and she gave me one of her free pints - Oatmeal cookie:) It was delicious. Every employee there gets three free pints a day! If they weren't an hour away I might consider yet another temporary employment opportunity.
On Sunday, I took them up Mt. Moosilauke because it is such a beautiful view of the White Mountains. It was a bit colder when Adam and I went, but four miles of uphill hiking makes you feel plenty warm even if you are only wearing shorts and a long sleeve shirt. But when we got to the top, it was so freakin' cold. The old man at the top told us it was 35 degrees up there and the wind was almost strong enough to knock us over. We hunkered down behind a little stone shelter to block out the biting wind while we ate or lunch. And sadly we decided to forgo are game of national park Yahtzee at the top. Maybe I am being dramatic, but we swear we saw snow clouds in the distance. Then on the way home, to top off a perfect girls weekend, we saw a double rainbow (that turned into a triple rainbow for a second). It was quite spectacular! So I posted it on Youtube for all to enjoy (double rainbow - I thought I would weep). I was depressed when the girls had to go, but the Hammonds swooped in right in time. Mac and Lynda are so sweet and the spent their entire Labor Day driving our new mini van up to VT, so I could officially be crowned a mom. I think I look good driving it around.
Hmmm...Other than that....oh yeah. Adam and I started volunteering as YL leaders again. Our first club was last Saturday. We are really excited! I think that is about it. I will try to keep blogging more regularly. It is really therapeutic for me. And it makes me feel like I am talking to all of you. I love and miss you all!
I believe this was the first belly picture we took at around 5 weeks. I forgot I had such a girly figure:)
As you can see, we were very diligent in the beginning when not much was changing...but we were so excited! I think this was week 6.
Week 7. This is when I actually think I started to lose weight, not from yuking all the time (even though this was probably the beginning of the constant nausea) but because I gave up coffee, red wine, most meats, anything too sweet, and a whole host of other things that made my stomach turn. All I wanted was fruits and veggies, so consequently I lost 5 lbs. I might have to try that diet after the babe:)
Week 13ish. It is so nice to grow a pooch and have your hubby love it. Adam always made me feel so cute, even though this was the beginning of the 'feeling fat not pregnant' stage. I didn't just gain weight at the site of the baby bump. I gained it everywhere. Thanks estrogen.
Week 14ish. This is Kit Kat kinda of putting it together that there is a baby cousin inside.
And then getting really excited when she realizes it is a girl (which of course no one is sure of but her).
Week 16ish. This was our first belly picture in Vermont.
Week 17ish. This is around the time people started to tell me I "popped" (which I think means 'you look like you could have a baby in there').
Week 18ish. I started trying to show off my baby bump:)
Week 19ish. I was already starting to feel little Hamlet move!
Week 24. This is not Vermont...in case you were getting ready to move up here due to the state's abundance of majestic mountains and gorgeous beaches. This is actually Miami, so a lot of you got to see me at this size.
And when I didn't appear loose enough, they brought in a male model to help me feel more relaxed. Things got kinda out of hand from here, so there will be no more pictures from this shoot, since I don't have 'graphic content' warning on my blog.
Kinda cute.....except for the giant bulge in my pants. I promise it is wind and not a pregnancy-induced FUVA.
Week 26. Starting to know what it feels like to be poked, patted, and disrobed because of my growing belly. Of course I don't mind it from Addy, but that man dressed like a squirrel in Burlington who asked to rub my baby...that freaked me out a little. So I pretended to be hearing impaired. No response necessary.
People love babies...especially when they are your BFs.
Week 28. I feel like I am growing pretty fast. I have been getting away with my 'long' shirts and breaking into Adams Ts, but even those our starting to turn into mid drifts. It's 'no lust day' all over again.
