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January 7, 2002

January 7, 2002

28 Weeks

I do not know where the time goes, it seems like just yesterday I was only 10 weeks, like just yesterday I wrote my first entry. It actually feels like just yesterday I wrote last week's entry - speaking of which, that is the LAST time I write an entry at 3:30 in the morning. I unfortunately made a “little” typo in one part of my last entry by unintentionally deleting one letter in a word. If you didn’t notice it - great. Please don’t bother going back to try and find it. Just believe me when I say that what I actually purchased for my baby were “shirts” and not something else. The sad part is, I used spell check 3 times and it didn’t pick up my mistake. Of course, only Corinne would have a spell check that includes profanity. Sorry about that one.

I hope everyone had a happy, healthy New Year and I especially hope that the new year brings forth a lot of wonderful and joyous events for everyone. I know that as the clock struck midnight on New Year’s Eve, I couldn’t stop thinking how we are now in the year that my baby will actually be BORN. I have waited all my life for this year to come and it is finally here. Took long enough, that’s for sure.

I don’t actually have a lot to report this week, it was pretty boring to be honest. Last Thursday, (the 3rd), I started my prenatal swimming class. The class is basically a “mid” impact water aerobics class designed for pg women. I am a water fanatic, I love any kind of water - pool, beach, you name it, so I thought this would be a great class for me. Great turned out to be an understatement. I LOVE this class. There is nothing like being pg and submerged under water. All the weight of your stomach gently lifts away and you have so much more mobility than you otherwise would.

I am taking the class at a local Y which is pretty new, maybe only a year or so old. It is one of the nicest gyms I have ever been in, it is like the NY Health and Racquet Club. The pool is heated to 88 degrees, which I know sounds really hot but it feels really great. One thing I cannot take is cold water. Best of all, the place is just so clean, and we all know how important that is for me. The class meets three days a week for an hour and has anywhere from 5-8 women in it, all of whom are extremely friendly and kind. Out of all of them, I am without question the largest, though I am definitely not the furthest along. There are women in the class who are only 4 months and another is nine months. The funny thing is that everyone in the class is having a boy! What are the odds of that? Of course, I still don’t know what I am having but I am beginning to think it is a boy as well - don’t ask me why. Well, I take that back. Deep, deep down, I still think it is a girl, as does my mother and Charles, but so many people are now saying boy - so maybe they know what they are talking about and I am just clueless.

Before I took the first class, I worried that my bathing suit would be too frumpy/dumpy and that I would look like a total ass. As it turned out, 5 other women have the exact same bathing suit as I do, so I worried over nothing. I am now so glad I didn’t spend $100+ on a bathing suit, that would have been a complete waste. As I was saying, I simply love this class, I love just swimming back and forth, doing all the exercises, using the floats - it is so relaxing and refreshing. The only unpleasant part is 1) having to get out of the pool mid-class to pee - not fun at all in a wet bathing suit, and 2) upon emerging from the water, feeling the weight of my stomach pulling down once again. Other than those two minor issues, the pool is my new friend. I especially love the fact that I feel the baby move a lot when I am swimming, it is like we are swimming together, me in the big pool, s/he in the little pool.

I am not positive, but I am pretty sure that the baby is having a lot of hiccups these days. The reason I believe this is because I will get steady, rhythmic little thumps every so often that last about 15 minutes or so. I will feel these little thumps about once every 3 seconds which I think is too short a time span for a baby to just be kicking its limbs. No baby kicks that often, right? It has to be the hiccups, at least I hope it is something that trivial and not the an early sign of Tourette’s or some other condition.

This past week I had a really scary/weird occurrence with respect to swelling/water retention. One day, I wore a new fleece sweatshirt that had elasticized wrists. By that evening, I noticed that my hands seemed even more swollen than usual and that my watch felt really uncomfortable. I pulled up my sleeve to remove my watch only to discover quite a horrific sight - my wrist area and my arm were two different thicknesses. The top part of my arm (wrist area and hand) were about 3 times the thickness of my lower arm, if that makes any sense. It was as if the sleeve squeezed all the water from my arm into the wrist and hand area and emptied out the lower part of my arm completely. I immediately screamed and called Charles over to look at my disfigurement. My arm just looked like a lumpy mess, like elephantitis, like something out of a horror flick. I don’t know how many of you watch Survivor, but just recently Kim Johnson on the show was suffering from this weird sort of edema in her lower legs. They showed her legs with her socks pulled down and she had really fat, thick upper calves and skinny, puny lower ones. That is essentially what my arms looked like. Instead of freaking out like I normally would, I decided to just wait and see if it went away overnight, which it did. I will be sure to mention it to my OB on Wednesday just in case. Especially since I now only have two pairs of shoes which fit. This makes for a very limited shoe wardrobe but I simply refuse to go out and buy shoes in a bigger size when I will only wear them for a few more months. I just hope to God I don’t have preeclampsia or Toxemia or something horrible like that. Fortunately for me the treatment for these conditions is bed rest and since I don’t work now it would not be a difficult remedy to endure seeing as how I lie on my butt half the day anyway. Because of this weird swelling, I have been making a conscious effort to essentially reduce my salt intake and increase my water consumption. The end result is that we go through 24 rolls of toilet paper a week, it seems. I basically live in the bathroom and would guess that at this stage in my pg, about 12 hours per day are spent with my pants down.

This past weekend my parents came up for a surprise visit. They only live two hours away so we see them relatively often but still, it is always nice when they come for a weekend. They arrived on Saturday afternoon and that evening we all went out to dinner at an Italian restaurant right in the center of our town. Even though my parents are in their 60’s, they are very young for their age and going out with them is like going out with our own friends. We had a lot of fun that evening and the whole time I kept thinking how it would be once we have the baby. My parents go to Mexico every year around January for three weeks and for years now, they have been bugging us to come with them. Of course, there was always some reason why we couldn’t go - vacations not working out, moving, new jobs, trying to get pg, etc. Well, now, we have no excuses left. At dinner Saturday night, my Dad started in again on how we should go to Mexico with them next January 2003, and of course I want to go but was wondering, is a nine-month old too young to bring on that type of a vacation? What do you all think? Basically, the hotel/timeshare is right on the beach so when we go, all we do all day is sit on the beach from sunup to sundown. If we needed to go back to our apartment, it takes all of one minute to get there which would be fine for the baby, I should think. It’s not as if we would half to pack a truckload of baby gear for use at the beach since it would be easier to just pop upstairs for a diaper change, for example. At night we usually go out to eat and stay out for awhile generally sightseeing and shopping, but again, a nine-month old should be able to handle that. At least I think so, but perhaps I am completely wrong? I just don’t want to assume anything seeing as how I have no experience on the matter. Traveling with a baby is a lot of work from what I hear and I might be underestimating the situation. If there is any reason that we need to go, it is so that I can be “scared straight” into making positively sure that I get my body back into shape before that vacation. There is no way in hell I would put on a bathing suit if I looked like a cellulite infected whale.

My last thought for the day is regarding the use of pacifiers. I plan on using them if my child is agreeable and desires one. Recently, a lot of people are telling me how terrible that is. My reaction - what is the big deal? Since when has the use of an innocent little “binky” destroyed anyone’s life? Personally, I think they are adorably cute and even though some people consider them a crutch, I don’t think that the use of one is going to create some psychopathic monster who is forever cursed with some dependency affliction.

I already know all the cons to their usage - bad teeth, unbreakable dependencies, related trauma, etc. Again, I say - whatever. And not to be gross, but a mother should be so lucky if a pacifier is the worst thing their child ever puts in their mouth, you know what I mean? Besides, with regard to the teeth issue, Charles and I have both been blessed with the absolute worst sets of teeth ever found on a human being, besides perhaps Neanderthal. And neither of us were pacifier users. Thankfully, years of intense pain and orthodontia have given us near picture perfect teeth. Based upon this unfortunate genetic makeup, I am nearly 100% positive our child will have horrible teeth anyway so how much more harm is a pacifier going to do? Not much I am sure. Aside from the cuteness issue, the main reason I have always wanted to use a pacifier with my children is because recent studies show that their usage lowers the chances of SIDS. Whether true or not, that’s all I needed to hear. Lord knows the first few months of my child’s life will consist of a panic-stricken Corinne sleeping fitfully on the floor of my child’s bedroom making sure that s/he is breathing. If something as simple as some rubber and some plastic may ease my mind then I am all for it. Of course, my child may hate a pacifier and this discussion will then become academic. Until that time, I cherish my little pacifier collection, waiting comfortably inbetween the onesies and the socks I have already purchased.

Until next week, take care.
Corinne and her baby
EDD 4-1-02