I am very excited for our family trip to Florida, but the one part that DOES NOT excite me in the least bit is the part about having to don a bathing suit, unless it’s accompanied by a giant moo moo. So needless to say I was apprehensive about trying on swim suits, but even my wildest imagination it was not as horrifying as the reality.

I have a long history of diet/exercise/weight obsession, for much of my adult life I was slightly UNDERWEIGHT, including when I got pregnant with Jasper. So to say that my new corporal reality sits well with me would be a huge lie. But, so many things have converged to make it seem nearly an insurmountable task to get back in shape, not the least of which is time.

I used to be really torn during Jasper’s naps on the weekend – should I go to the gym or tackle the backlog of client photos, or work on my templates or a million other thing I need to get done? Now, Jasper doesn’t even nap on the weekends anymore so it seems doubly impossible!

But, my recent dressing room trauma DID motivate me sufficiently that I am determined to find time to get back in shape SOMEHOW, come hell or high water. So Saturday morning, Jeff slept in until 9 (Jasper and I were up at 7am) so in return I got to go to the gym for an hour for the first time in…. I actually have no idea how long. So long that Jeff said “What gym?” because he had just assumed I let my membership lapse (which I would have except it’s only $10 a month!).

But anyway, it felt GLORIOUS! I only had time to lift weights and walk on an incline for about 10 minutes, but I’m sore and it feels amazing and fabulous that I MUST find a way to get there at least 3 times a week. I figure if I go both weekend days, I can maybe find one weekend day when Jeff can come home from work on the earlier side and I can sneak away.. or maybe get my parents to meet us at home to feed Jasper while I go. I don’t know, I need some ideas!

If you somehow manage to be a mom and stay fit, please share your tips! I need more inspiration..

In the complete OPPOSITE scenario to when you take your car to the mechanic and it operates perfectly, Jasper picked yesterday – the day we visit the pediatrician – to get his first ever stomach bug.  Poor little guy must have pooped 12 times!   Not being a veteran of this PARTICULAR scenario, I was worried he’d poop all night waking us both up numerous times.. thankfully he managed to save one big one for this morning when I got him out of bed.  But I digress..

Jasper weighed 22.4 lbs, which is up from 21.9 at his last visit at 12 months and keeps him firmly in 25th% according to our pedi’s chart (which is a bit higher than those I’ve seen online which place him closer to 20th%). So as the pedi put it, whatever nutrients he IS getting from my milk (mostly) and a bit of food here and there is satisfying his caloric requirements if not nutritional diversity.

His take on it was that eventually, my milk will dry up and/or Jasper will wean himself and naturally start to make up for the caloric deficit by eating more foods.

When I brought up the red esophagus and my discussion with the ENT, he said that the fact that Jasper WILL eat goldfish and cheerios would seem to indicate that it’s not an anatomical issue.  I told him I’d thought of that, but my theory was that some foods Jasper deems exciting enough to be a bit uncomfortable for, but the other not so exciting things just aren’t worth it to him.  Luckily our pediatrician is so collaborative and we basically brainstormed together and came up with the plan that we would try him back on prevacid for up to a month to see if the situation improves any.

I think it’s a good plan, but I still have lingering doubts weather prevacid is an effective drug for Jasper given that he was scoped by the ENT once while on prevacid and still had mild redness.  I’m not sure what to do about that one since it seems that both my pediatrician and his GI doc are reluctant to try different medication.

My other question to him was weather or not I should let Jasper snack to his heart’s content vs. holding out in hopes that his hunger would build toward an actual meal and he thought he shouldn’t be snacking on filler foods. Not sure how I feel about that either because it doesn’t seem to be working!

In other medical(ish) news, I forgot to mention that we ran into my lactation consultant at the pumpkin patch of all places (told you it was crowded, the whole county seemed to be there!)

She asked me how things were going and I told her not great. I haven’t blogged about it too much (but I want to mention it now because there is a HUGE lack of information about this problem on the internet) but my let down has become elusive again, but this time it’s been going on for a month or so. Usually when I’ve gone through periods of disappearing or delayed let down it’s come back to normal after a few days.  I hadn’t called her because this is an issue that there doesn’t seem to be much help for, my normal method of taking domperidone to “top off” my supply wasn’t working.

She told me that she has been using oxytocin nasal spray for this issue with another client with success, so I’m really excited to try it.  For example I haven’t been able to let down for Jasper’s before bed nursing session in 3 weeks now, which means that I’ve had to put him to bed with no milk and then go pump for a few minutes (which strangely enough I CAN let down more easily for) and then go back and get him out of bed to nurse him.

I should probably just cut out the evening nursing session, I think my supply is really low then, but for some reason it just SEEMS like before bed is such a natural time for nursing (plus I’m reluctant to cut out ANY sessions until he starts eating better!) Most people drop that session or morning sessions last right?  I suppose I could cut out the 4pm feeding, but then he’s going from 12 – 7 with no milk because he’s still not taking it in the sippy.. any tips on how to get him to do that? He gets SOOOOO mad when he realizes there is anything but water in there – even juice or something sweet makes him angry!

It all started out innocently enough, I met the only midwife in the practice that I hadn’t seen before and she was as great as all the others. I weighed in at 160, a 2lb gain from last week. (I sure hope some of that is water weight!)

Then I asked for the internal. Big mistake!

First she put her fingers up there and said my cervix was still pretty posterior. At this point it was like all the other internals I’d had, mildly uncomfortable but nothing unmanageable. Then she started moving them around trying to do something, I didn’t know what but it was SO painful! Then she said “take a few deep breaths and I won’t move my fingers,” so I did, and that was ok. But then she SHOVED them in my cervix and it felt like she was digging around for something!

At one point I actually screamed “Please stop!” but she kinda kept going.. it was really weird and It still makes my cervix shrivel when I think about it. I don’t think I’m going to ask for any more internals, Jeff will just have to wait until I go into labor.

Turns out that the external opening (OS) to my cervix is a fingertip dilated, so she was trying to see if she could get her finger in there to get through to the uterus and if she could, she would have swept my membranes. But because I am only 50% effaced, she couldn’t. The back of the cervix is still pretty closed.

She said that by doing whatever the hell it was she did that she actually moved the cervix from posterior to anterior (which is good I guess) and maybe dilated me a bit more.

Jasper’s head is at -2 station, which is good progress because he was still at -4 last time they checked.

So the official stats: fingertip dilated, 50% effaced, -2 station. I really don’t think that knowing these numbers was worth the unpleasantness of the whole experience!

I also asked her at what point they start monitoring and talking induction. Their policy is to allow you to go all the way to 42 weeks so long as the BPP and NST tests don’t show any reason not to.

Jasper, this is your mother talking. It is NOT OK to stay in there another 3 weeks!! If you do, you will never hear the end of it. I will lay a Jewish mother guilt trip on you for the rest of your life – don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Midwife Judy (who was the one who took care of me during my first preterm labor episode) didn’t offer me an internal and I didn’t ask for one figuring that I’d get one at my next 39 week appointment.

This made Jeff very unhappy!

At his office they have a pool going on, and I guess everyone wanted to know if I’d made any “progress.”

I never would have believed you if you’d told me years ago that there would be people I’ve never met wanting to know how many centimeters dilated my cervix is!

The only other news of note is that I weighed in again at 158 lbs, the same that I was at 36 & 37 weeks. I was irrationally happy at that news. Does that make me a terrible person??

I should probably be worried that it means the baby isn’t growing as he is supposed to be gaining almost half a lb a week at this point.. but I have read several places that your weight gain may slow or even stop in the last month. Of course, I haven’t followed any of the “typical” patterns of weight gain this whole pregnancy so I was sure that wouldn’t apply to me. But I didn’t realize how happy I’d be when it did.

Now if I could just have this baby before any stretch marks or additional pounds show up!

Speaking of which, he is now so low in my pelvis that I am in constant pain down there. Even when I walk I feel like I am walking around his head. Sleeping has become particularly torturous. Well, not sleeping so much as turning over and getting out of bed (which I do several times a night to pee of course.)

I hope all that pressure is doing SOMETHING to soften/open my cervix. Wish me progress luck at my 39 week appointment Monday!

159 today. UGH. That’s up from 153 at my last appointment just over two weeks ago. How can you gain 3lbs a week? At this point baby is growing about .5 lbs a week, so the other 2.5 are going to my butt and thighs which I really thought couldn’t get any bigger.

I thought wrong.

So that puts me at about 40lbs gained the entire PG, with potentially 4 more weeks (or more) to go.. which at the rate of 3lbs a week could be another 12 lbs or so! God I hope not.

I wish I could say its water weight or swelling, and if this had been two days ago I could. But today my feet and legs were actually normal, which is to say I could actually see the veins in my feet and my toes don’t look or feel like little sausages about to break out of their casings!

The extra weight is causing so much discomfort, particularly in the skin just under my breasts where all the enormous weight of my belly is putting the most strain. It sort of feels tender all the time, like a perpetual sunburn.

The good news is that now that I’m 36 weeks and so close to “term” (37 weeks) I got the ok to start moderate exercise again, so hopefully moving my giant ass around a little will keep the weight gain to a minimum these last 4 weeks.

The Breastfeeding Class

Was totally useless. Thank god I didn’t make Jeff go, if I was bored I can only imagine how he would have felt! I think I am just as prepared as one can be without having an actual baby and knowing what specific problems we will encounter and how to counteract them. All I can do is line up the info and #s of people who can help if we do have problems.

We took the second half of our “Prepared Childbirth Class” on Sunday. Once again we had a great instructor, so it was a good experience.

Tomorrow we do “the ABCs of Childcare” class at Phelps.. and that’s the end of our classes!

Not “Preterm” Labor Anymore..

Saturday day I had really bad contractions all day. They were different than my other consistent contractions in that they started out first as a menstrual cramp feeling. Then they turned into cramps every 5 minutes or so, but without the tightening contraction feeling. Then they started in with the tightening and got sharper so that they were menstrual achy AND sharply painful and at one point were as little as 3 minutes apart. This went on for at least 3 hours but slowed down and eventually stopped.

I have NO idea how I’m going to know when I’m in real labor! I pray I am one of the lucky 15% who’s water breaks at the onset, at least then I’ll know.

Next on my to do list is to pack that hospital bag… I think we’re going to need it sooner rather than later!

All that happened was that she weighed me and then listened to the heartbeat.  I thought she was at least going to measure my uterus, but no such luck.

The weird thing was that the nurse who weighed me said their scale was off by +5 lbs, and they couldn’t balance it, so they just deducted 5lbs from the weight.. well I weighed 135 on that scale.. which is what I actually weigh according to the scale at my gym, so they wrote me down at 130. For some reason, even though its a lie, that made me feel kinda happy. I had been expecting a weight gain lecture!

The only interesting thing that happened at my appointment is that I got to schedule the anatomy scan (aka “big ultrasound” or sex finding out day) for March 19th. That’s the Wednesday following our little Miami trip, so March is shaping up to be a pretty good month all in all.

I know I need to do a belly shot, hopefully will get around to it this weekend.. I’m verging on looking pregnant and not just pudgy.. but not quite. I’ll let you be the judge.

Have a good weekend!