 | Diary Navigation:
|
December 3, 2001
December 3, 2001
23 Weeks
I am getting so bad about posting my entries, they are coming later and later in the week each time. Sorry ladies, I do plan to one day get my act together.
Just a fair word of warning, this entry is all over the place, meaning, I just jump from one topic to the next, there are no transitions from subject to subject. Sorry about that, my thoughts are quite disjointed these days. Which leads me to my first topic -
I’m Stupid
Am I becoming less intelligent as time goes by? I swear, my memory is HORRIBLE. Someone will tell me something (like their name), and two seconds later I cannot remember it. I also cannot remember where I have placed things, cannot remember what I did the day before, cannot even remember simple facts - watching Jeopardy has become a painful experience for me because even the simple/dummy questions take me a while now to answer. It’s like my brain is turning to mush and I can’t do a thing about it. I am just hoping that this is all a pg side effect that will disappear after the baby is born.
Visible Baby Kicks
On 11/27/01 I was able to actually SEE the baby’s kicks through my stomach for the first time ever. Charles says he has already seen them but like I already may have mentioned, I could never see the kicks before because they were on the underside of my belly. Now they are moving up and the one I was finally able to see was right around my belly button area. I have to admit, the entire experience, though it lasted about a nanosecond, was pretty neat.
Blood Allergies
I have a question for anyone out there who may know the answer. I was watching some documentary on infertility and birth and featured on the show was one couple who was allergic to each other’s blood. My question is, is being allergic to each other’s blood the same thing as being RH negative (like me)? What does that mean exactly? Does it mean that women who are RH negative have a harder chance of becoming pg at all? I keep forgetting to ask my OB every time I go in for a visit and was hoping somebody out there would know.
Stomach Rubbing
One thing that I have always noticed about pg women is that they seem to always rub their stomachs - constantly. Before I was pg, I never thought I would rub my stomach. No particular reason, just didn’t seem like a “Corinne” type thing to do. Then, after I became pg, I thought that as soon as I actually had a stomach I would most likely start doing it as a natural instinct or reflex. Well, I have just started my 6th month of pregnancy and I still don’t rub my stomach - I wonder why? I have tried to do it and it just doesn’t feel right to me, mainly because I am so uncoordinated, I CAN’T do it. Remember that little game we used to play as children where you try to pat your head and rub your stomach at the same time? You can’t do both differently, you either rub both your head and stomach or you pat both, but it is really hard to do each act differently. Well, that is what stomach rubbing is to me, a task too difficult to coordinate with any other physical act. Even if I am simply sitting on the sofa staring aimlessly at the TV, it feels strange to me to just rub my stomach. I feel like I got gypped though, I wish the act appealed to me. One thing I do is I scratch my stomach a lot. Not too attractive, I admit, so I only do it when I am alone. And speaking of my stomach, my linea negra is starting to climb up past my belly button and underneath my ribs.
Washing of Baby Clothes
All I ever hear pg women say before they are about to deliver is that they washed a ton of new baby clothes. My question: is it really necessary to wash baby clothes when they are new? I mean, what will happen if you don’t? Will it hurt the baby somehow? (Please note there is no sarcasm here, I really am clueless). And do you ALWAYS wash new baby clothes or is it like for just the first couple of months of their life? I mean, I couldn’t imagine washing a one year olds new overalls. Please advise.
Cord Blood Storage
Charles and I are deliberating whether or not to save our baby’s cord blood for any possible future need as a preventive measure against illness, etc. Has anyone out there done this and what is your opinion on it? It is not that expensive to do so we are really considering it. Again, any advice anyone can give would be greatly appreciated.
How I Feel
I had these really weird sensations the other day - they weren’t contractions or anything like that, they were sort of weird tightenings, like really my stomach was just getting a little harder than usual. They were nowhere near as strong as BH contractions, but when I would sit down my stomach would seem looser and when I would stand up, my stomach would seem tighter than it had the day before. Nothing hurt, nothing felt odd or out of place so I just ignored it. I chalked it up to my stomach just getting harder as the baby grows and moves higher up in my abdomen. Has anyone else experienced this sensation?
I mentioned in my last entry that my doctor prescribed iron tablets because I was slightly anemic. I took them for two days and then stopped because I was so constipated. I noticed though that when I stopped taking them, I was so much weaker than I had been and completely without any energy. I started taking them again and I have felt so much better, I have completely renewed energy, I just love those pills.
I notice that as this pg progresses, I become more and more paranoid about the stupidest things. For one thing, when Charles leaves the house to run an errand for whatever reason, I start imagining that he will die in an accident- how morbid is that? When we leave the house together, I become paranoid that a candle or a stove or something was left on and our apartment has burned to the ground. I keep having nightmares where I am attending Charles’ funeral with a baby in my arms. Clearly it doesn’t take a degree in psychology to see what my worst fears are. But man, this sucks. I hope that one day soon I can go back to my semi-normal life where I worried about the normal, everyday stuff.
Holiday Party
Last night, Charles and I went to his company’s holiday party. There were about 600 employees there and as always, there was a DJ playing ultra loud music. After stuffing my face on roast beef, pasta salad and ginger ale, Charles and I decided to go and dance. First of all, let me just start by saying that I HATE to dance. I do it only if I am begged and usually after I have had a couple of drinks/am “liquored up.” I am about the most uncoordinated person on the face of the earth. Soul train dancer I am not. I am the type of person who can only dance the two step (moving both feet from side to side, alternating feet to the beat, barely moving arms, concentrating hard on not getting out of beat). If I am around ANYONE who cannot keep a beat, I will without fail get off beat myself and have to stop and start from the beginning. It is PATHETIC. If I even try to move my arms, I risk looking like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, trying to dance in his mental hospital. You would think being half Black that I would have been blessed with some rhythm. But no, yet another stereotype disproved...All this to say, whatever possessed me to get out on the dance floor, AND while PG, I will never know. I guess I did it because Charles really wanted to dance and I always feel bad saying no all the time. Also, I figured that being pg, no one would be expecting me to do anything great so if I messed up, people might just chalk it up to my elephant like appearance.
We danced on and off all night and again, being stupid me, it didn’t occur to me until we were about to leave that the music in the place was so incredibly loud, that maybe I could be hurting the baby’s ears. I mean, that music was LOUD - why hadn’t I thought of that before? What was wrong with me (except that my common sense along with my intelligence is rapidly decreasing). The entire way home I worried Charles to death telling him that because of our foolishness, our baby was now going to be deaf and that we should prepare now by taking sign language. Do you think that the loud music could have actually done any harm? God - what was I thinking? How could this not have occurred to me before the end of the night? I am actually seeking reassurance here, so if anyone is willing to offer me any, please feel free to do so.
The Weather
I am so sick of the heat. All last week and this past Saturday it was 70 degrees. It is freakin’ December for God’s sake. We had planned on getting our Christmas tree on Sunday and decorating the house but with the warm weather, we just weren’t in the mood. I would be ecstatic to see snow at this point. Anyhow, regarding this weather, I just wanted to conclude this week’s entry with a word about how parents dress their children.
Like I said, it has been pretty warm these past few days. Despite the warmth during the day, it does get cold at night and sometimes, it is cold at different periods during the day. This is northern VA, not Texas or Florida. Additionally, despite the warm days we have had, there are a LOT of random days when it has been actually cold outside. It bothers me therefore, that so many mothers out there let their kids go our in flip flops, shorts and sleeveless shirts on the days where it is cold. Sure, it many have been “hot” (and I use that term lightly) yesterday, but it is 50 degrees today! Come on people!!!!
Every day I see a ton of kids running around in shorts - no jacket, no socks, no closed shoes - it is simply ridiculous. The other day it actually was cold, around 48 degrees. While shopping at the grocery store, I watched a woman come in the store with her son who was about 9 years old. The mother had on long pants (jeans), a sweater, a jacket and boots. The son had on shorts, sandals and a short sleeved shirt. As they both walked by me, I could hear the son bitching about how cold he was. Now I ask you - what is wrong with this picture? The mother obviously knew it was cold enough because SHE certainly had on the appropriate clothing for the weather that day! So, I am thinking that the kid probably wanted to wear shorts because he wore them another day when it was warmer outside. The mother either didn’t care or simply didn’t feel like being bothered arguing about it. Personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass how warm feels outside, and I certainly don’t care that is was warm yesterday - if it is 50 or 60 degrees outside TODAY, if it is December, if it is WINTERTIME - my child is not wearing SHORTS, I don’t care if they scream until they are blue in the face.
The other night Charles and I went out to dinner and it was again about 45 degrees outside. In the restaurant waiting to be seated was a mother with her approximately 2 year old daughter, dressed in a summer sun dress (sleeveless) and sandals. The poor child had a runny nose and was crying and sniffling -gee, I wonder why?
This scene pisses me off because:
1) the poor child is obviously sick or cold or both and she has a mother too stupid to know how to dress her kid.
2) it is a child like this who will become sick and infect my child when they are in daycare together the next day. My poor child will have to suffer even though I did have the foresight to realize that a baby should be COVERED in the wintertime. My poor child will also have to suffer just because this other kid’s mother was either too lazy, stupid or undisciplined to appropriately dress her child.
Well, that is my rant for the week, let me stop now before I go on and on for days about it.
Hope everyone is doing well in their pgs and for those ladies still trying, I wish you all the best.
Love always,
Corinne and her baby
EDD 4-1-02
 |  |
|
want to keep a diary on iParenting?
Authoring a diary on the iParenting network allows you to chronicle your family's story, preserving it for years to come. It's also a great way to get the most out of the iParenting community. Click here to start...
|
The iParenting Media Awards program helps parents find the best products for their families. 
