On Tuesday of this week, I had my monthly visit with my babydoctor, Dr. Gingrich (the one I previously mentioned looks a bit like Ann Coulter, but who does not have the unpleasant demeanor to match; she’s very sweet and kind, in my opinion). As with all the other doctor’s appointments, I made Greg come with me. After showing up about two minutes late, we waited in the waiting room for over half an hour for a very brief and uneventful checkup. Weight and blood pressure were taken, Dr. Gingrich reviewed all the myriad blood tests I had done the last time I visited and doppler’d my belly, more blood was drawn, and we were back out into the waiting room after probably 10 minutes or so. Granted, a lot was covered in those 10 minutes. I asked the nurse who weighed me how my weight was progressing since the scale at home said I’d gained about a couple of pounds, and she informed me that I’d actually dropped a pound somewhere along the way and never gained it back. As with everything else pregnancy related, I was a little worried and thinking it was abnormal, but Dr. Gingrich informed that it was just fine that my weight was pretty much the same since I’m already overweight, and that a weight gain of 10-15 pounds was optimal for someone my size (which is how much I should have gained by now if I was “normal” size instead of fun size). She went over all the blood test results with me, and relieved me of my fears that I had AIDS, Hepatitis, anemia, or any of the other various maladies that I’d been tested for. My hemoglobin was a rather robust 13 and some change, which is good considering that I was quite anemic all through high school. I knew all that stomach-irritating, constipation-inducing iron in my prenatal vitamins had to be good for something. I went to pay for my co-pay, only to be informed that I no longer had a co-pay at my visits, which is sweet. After years of paying into health insurance that I’ve scarcely used (never enough to even meet my deductible), I’m finally reaping the rewards of forking over so much cash every paycheck for seemingly nothing in return.
In other news, I found myself becoming Weepy McWeeperson over stupid stuff that normally wouldn’t register on the sob-o-meter. One morning driving home from work, I merely thought of the song “Do You Realize?” by the Flaming Lips (again, I was not actually listening to it), and tears started welling up in my eyes. We also got the movie “Up” from Netflix that week. I’d heard it was sad in parts, and I’m usually kind of a sucker for sappy movies, so I don’t know why I was so surprised that I cried approximately every two minutes through the entire movie. There were the obvious parts, like when Carl and Ellie find out they can’t have babies (oh help me please, I’m crying now just thinking of it, dammit), and when Ellie dies (okay, I just need to keep a box of tissues near at all times lest I think of that movie ever again), but I also cried when Carl and Ellie’s house was the last left on their street. And when someone knocked over the mailbox. And any time that Dug was being made fun of by the other dogs (I’m completely serious). And when Carl showed up at the boy’s Wilderness Scouts ceremony. And so on, and so forth. I made the mistake of having a plate of food in my lap when I was trying to watch it, and every time I tried to take a bite, something would happen that would make me sob (not just tear up; literally sob) and nearly choke on my food. I finally gave up on eating anything about halfway through the movie, because I really didn’t want to have to give myself the Heimlich maneuver.
Later that week, we got “Where the Wild Things Are” in the mail, which I was just marginally interested in seeing. I quit watching after I started sobbing uncontrollably when Max’s snow fort was destroyed. I saw one tear roll down his cheek, and it was all over. Greg looked at me like I had lost my ever-loving mind. All I could choke out between sobs was “they destroyed his snow fort!”. I turned my attention instead to the computer, which I was pretty sure was not going to play on my tumultuous emotions. New rule: no more watching movies that have even the remotest chance of making me cry.
One fact that all the pregnancy books tell you, along with just how gorgeous your skin is going to be, is that your hair will have never looked better and it will grow faster than usual. I must attest to the truthiness (ha! spell check didn’t correct that!) of this statement, because I have noticed that I’ve been having a lot more good hair days than bad lately. My hair is definitely thicker and shinier (well, greasier too, but that’s what shampoo is for, ya dirty hippies), and has more body than usual, which is just peachy keen. What they all neglect to tell you (beside The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy; thanks for the heads-up, Vicki) is that all of your other hair also grows at the same accelerated rate, and that hair starts popping up in places you never knew it could (and I won’t go into the pubic zone here, you perverts). Suddenly I noticed that my belly was covered in a scant carpet of baby-fine blonde hair, and that my leg and arm hair have started growing at an exponential rate. The peach fuzz that already existed to some extent on my face has become peachier and fuzzier. I’ve always had what seems like an excessive amount of arm hair, but it’s getting thicker by the minute. Luckily I’ve inherited my grandmother’s German genes and blonde hair; had I taken after the Italian/Sicilian side of my family, I’d probably be resembling one of the Great Apes by now and dragging along on my knuckles, wearing a diaper (and possibly tearing off some innocent person’s face). So now I’m shinier and hairier. Maybe I am turning into an ape: a rare blonde, albino ape. I’ll try to climb the trees in the backyard, just to be sure.
Lastly, I finally got some much-needed maternity scrubs. When I took them home and tried them on, the shirts were a little large and the pants were loose but seemed to fit okay, even though the pants were predictably too long (I realized a long time ago that women’s clothes are in fact modeled after Amazon women). Feeling a little restricted by my other scrubs (which do still fit, even if a little snugger than I like), I decided to wear the maternity scrubs to work one night. I spent the entire night trying to avoid being the subject of “Pants on the Ground”, since I had to pull my pants up every five seconds to prevent myself from tripping on my own pants and breaking my legs. I’ll just have to hang in there until I get large enough to outgrow the regular scrubs and graduate to my big girl pants.
And, that’s a wrap! Tune in for the next riveting installment of Itty Bitty Blog!
In other news, I found myself becoming Weepy McWeeperson over stupid stuff that normally wouldn’t register on the sob-o-meter. One morning driving home from work, I merely thought of the song “Do You Realize?” by the Flaming Lips (again, I was not actually listening to it), and tears started welling up in my eyes. We also got the movie “Up” from Netflix that week. I’d heard it was sad in parts, and I’m usually kind of a sucker for sappy movies, so I don’t know why I was so surprised that I cried approximately every two minutes through the entire movie. There were the obvious parts, like when Carl and Ellie find out they can’t have babies (oh help me please, I’m crying now just thinking of it, dammit), and when Ellie dies (okay, I just need to keep a box of tissues near at all times lest I think of that movie ever again), but I also cried when Carl and Ellie’s house was the last left on their street. And when someone knocked over the mailbox. And any time that Dug was being made fun of by the other dogs (I’m completely serious). And when Carl showed up at the boy’s Wilderness Scouts ceremony. And so on, and so forth. I made the mistake of having a plate of food in my lap when I was trying to watch it, and every time I tried to take a bite, something would happen that would make me sob (not just tear up; literally sob) and nearly choke on my food. I finally gave up on eating anything about halfway through the movie, because I really didn’t want to have to give myself the Heimlich maneuver.
Later that week, we got “Where the Wild Things Are” in the mail, which I was just marginally interested in seeing. I quit watching after I started sobbing uncontrollably when Max’s snow fort was destroyed. I saw one tear roll down his cheek, and it was all over. Greg looked at me like I had lost my ever-loving mind. All I could choke out between sobs was “they destroyed his snow fort!”. I turned my attention instead to the computer, which I was pretty sure was not going to play on my tumultuous emotions. New rule: no more watching movies that have even the remotest chance of making me cry.
One fact that all the pregnancy books tell you, along with just how gorgeous your skin is going to be, is that your hair will have never looked better and it will grow faster than usual. I must attest to the truthiness (ha! spell check didn’t correct that!) of this statement, because I have noticed that I’ve been having a lot more good hair days than bad lately. My hair is definitely thicker and shinier (well, greasier too, but that’s what shampoo is for, ya dirty hippies), and has more body than usual, which is just peachy keen. What they all neglect to tell you (beside The Girlfriend’s Guide to Pregnancy; thanks for the heads-up, Vicki) is that all of your other hair also grows at the same accelerated rate, and that hair starts popping up in places you never knew it could (and I won’t go into the pubic zone here, you perverts). Suddenly I noticed that my belly was covered in a scant carpet of baby-fine blonde hair, and that my leg and arm hair have started growing at an exponential rate. The peach fuzz that already existed to some extent on my face has become peachier and fuzzier. I’ve always had what seems like an excessive amount of arm hair, but it’s getting thicker by the minute. Luckily I’ve inherited my grandmother’s German genes and blonde hair; had I taken after the Italian/Sicilian side of my family, I’d probably be resembling one of the Great Apes by now and dragging along on my knuckles, wearing a diaper (and possibly tearing off some innocent person’s face). So now I’m shinier and hairier. Maybe I am turning into an ape: a rare blonde, albino ape. I’ll try to climb the trees in the backyard, just to be sure.
Lastly, I finally got some much-needed maternity scrubs. When I took them home and tried them on, the shirts were a little large and the pants were loose but seemed to fit okay, even though the pants were predictably too long (I realized a long time ago that women’s clothes are in fact modeled after Amazon women). Feeling a little restricted by my other scrubs (which do still fit, even if a little snugger than I like), I decided to wear the maternity scrubs to work one night. I spent the entire night trying to avoid being the subject of “Pants on the Ground”, since I had to pull my pants up every five seconds to prevent myself from tripping on my own pants and breaking my legs. I’ll just have to hang in there until I get large enough to outgrow the regular scrubs and graduate to my big girl pants.
And, that’s a wrap! Tune in for the next riveting installment of Itty Bitty Blog!
No comments:
Post a Comment