Whoooooaaaaaaaa!
You look like you’re about to pop!!!
You haven’t had that baby yet?
That baby definitely hasn’t dropped.
You *have* talked with your doctor about how you’ll probably need a C-section, right?
I walked downstairs last night to get a quick snack and what do I find in my kitchen?
Basically the entire contents of the bathtub I just drained after taking a nice post-two-weddings-OMG-my legs-and-feet-hurt soak.
On the floor, dripping down the cabinets, on the counter, even filling the butter dish.
Yes. This is exactly what a nine months pregnant woman wants to be dealing with right now: the possibility of major plumbing work.
Damn. It.
I’ve been sick for a week. Ross had this cold for all of two days, but I’ve spent the last 168 hours coughing, sneezing, blowing my nose, and dying.
I finally decided to give in and go to my regular doctor to see if there was anything he could do for me (this was of course after calling my OB to get a list of medications/antibiotics that are safe during pregnancy – my OB kindly reminded me that my regular doctor 1) would be able to tell I’m pregnant and 2) did, in fact, graduate from medical school, too.)
After waiting for an hour to get into the examination room, I finally saw the doctor. He confirmed that I have a sinus infection AND bronchitis (for some reason I must get both at the same time, always) and I really should have come in last week when I started to feel bad. He and I have this same conversation about three times a year.
He ended up giving me an antibiotic but not any kind of decongestant. The antibiotic will kick the infections, but the decongestants aren’t necessary and are more likely to have stuff in them that we’d rather not expose the baby to. Basically, I’ll feel better in a couple days but will experience no immediate relief.
So, this pretty much means I’ll have another night of waking up to cough pitifully, blow my nose, and sweat. Awesome.
Ross and I are both home sick. He has a sore throat. I have a sore throat, fever, and a cough – not to mention the 6+ pound fetus doing aerobics in my belly.
But who’s the one that’s been the the store, paid bills, and is currently NOT napping because someone should be conscious while the exterminator is here dealing with our spider cricket “problem” (as the other is curled up in bed with the dogs watching TV)?
THAT WOULD BE ME.
We were supposed to have our 50 billionth follow-up appointment with the specialist tomorrow morning at 8:30am. An appointment we’ve had scheduled for two months. An appointment that 1) involves putting to rest the likelihood of a potential “issue” and 2) means seeing this wiggly child on screen (TOES!!!!!)
You may remember that I’ve switched jobs. Switching jobs usually involves switching insurance. When you go to a specialist, there’s all kinds of “authorizations” that have to happen before you can be seen, otherwise you might get charged a ridiculous amount of money. Yes, insurance is a very confusing animal, made even more confusing when you go from being a dependent to an employee with her own health plan within a month. But still, you’d think staying on top of paperwork and getting everything in super early would alleviate any confusion and delays.
NOT SO MUCH.
At my regular OB appointment last week, I checked with the office manager at my OB’s office to see if we had gotten the appointment reauthorized under my new insurance. She said she would check on it and call me right away. Which she did, because she’s awesome and does her job very well. And do you know what she said when she called me?
“I looked up your social security number in the system and they are showing you have no active coverage. I knew that since you’re 35 weeks pregnant, you’d probably want to know that.”
And after thanking her for being wonderful and realizing that information like that is, oh I don’t know, IMPORTANT, to someone who could realistically go into labor AT ANY SECOND, and proceeded to explode.
And we all know how pregnant ladies explode. We cry.
After spending yesterday trying to get the whole not having insurance thing sorted out, my day ended with a phone call saying that my insurance was now active and I should be fine.
AGAIN NOT SO MUCH.
My OB’s wonderful office manager called me this morning to say that I’m still not showing up as active and that authorization requires 24 hours. 24 hours after she called would put us at 10am, a time very much after our 8:30 appointment.
Again with the exploding, mostly because I know how hard it is to get appointments with specialist, and also because DAMMIT.
So, then the sweet, sweet office manager advised me to call the specialist and explain the situation. Hopefully we would be able to get another appointment late this week or early next week – she would hate for us to show up at the appointment and not be covered.
Taking her advice, I called the specialist and explained what was going on. I sensed some hesitation in her voice. And then my voice got wobbly. As soon as she heard that she said, “Ok, honey, we’ll figure this out.”
I managed to get another appointment for 1:00pm on Monday, a good 5 days after our original appointment but hopefully far enough away that this stuff would be well sorted out by then.
Finally our insurance person gets back in touch with me. She says it takes 48 hours for me to appear in the system. Something she probably should have mentioned yesterday during maybe 1 of the 18 times I mentioned that I had a specialist appointment on Wednesday morning. And then she said, “You could always just go to the appointment, pay, and then file a claim to get reimbursed.”
Yes. Yes, because THAT WOULD BE SO EASY. While I’m at it, I will also solve world hunger and figure out exactly why anyone cares about what Kim Kardashian is doing. Equal levels of difficulty but realistically with a higher probability for success.
We all remember this, right?
Well, I got a call today from a nurse at my OB’s office saying that my numbers from the first test looked a little “off,” and I need to go *back* and take the three hour version of the test.
When she said “off” I assumed she meant “high” and that it’s possible I have gestational diabetes. But upon further digging I found out that my numbers were too low when they took my blood before the downing of the drink of sugar and death.
So, tomorrow I will go back to LabCorp, get blood drawn again, endure the drink again, sit for THREE HOURS, and have blood taken once again. Because my numbers were three bloody points below what they should be.
This better mean that I’ll be required to eat *more* vanilla ice cream mixed with peanut butter.
*UPDATE*
So I did my part and took part in the requisite fasting before the test. This morning I call LabCorp to make sure the order for the test had been faxed over. They say it hasn’t. At this point it’s 8am, and I’m starving, so I eat, figuring today is a wash. I call my doctor’s office when it opens at 8:30 to remind them to fax the order. They say they have. I call LabCorp again. They say they do have it, they were just looking under K instead of C. Because apparently me saying “Valerie Catrow, C-A-T-R-O-W” isn’t specific enough.” So, I will try again tomorrow.
You would think what with the stress of selling and buying a house finally being over, I would have experienced a nice, solid sleep last night.
Not so much.
After going to bed at 10:30, I woke up at 4 ready to go.
I like to think of this not as a result of my insane tendency to obsess over details like where we will put all of our furniture in the new house and more as a blessed event in which the Good Lord is preparing me for being awoken by the squawks and screeches of a delightful newborn in a few short months.
It’s going to be a long day.
This whole selling and buying of houses thing is proving to be quite the uphill battle, one I just won’t speak of because it will either make me cry or cause my head to explode from how a-holish people can be.
Meanwhile we had round 2 of our Baby Basics class tonight. This one involved discussions about things like circumcision, vaccinations and general care and feeding of infants. My chest tightened with each topic and I repeatedly had thoughts of “I’m not sure I can do this.”
And now I’m seriously considering giving the dogs away. Or just leaving them on the side of the highway. Or in the middle of it.
I spent about 20 minutes tonight griping at Ross for not getting the car seat situation figured out. Because clearly we need to have the car seat picked out a full 16 weeks before this child gets here. And because I’m clearly frustrated about something else.
The house hasn’t sold yet. I’m sure you knew that considering the lack of “OMG THE HOUSE IT IS SOLD SEE YA NEIGBORHOOD HOOLIGANS” post. Clearly, worse things could be going on, but after a steady flow of interested people, it’s just baffling and disappointing that we haven’t had any offers. Thus we still don’t know if we’ll be bringing the baby home to this house or to another location-yet-to-be-determined house.
So I yell about car seats.
The urge to nest has been kicking in like none other, mostly because there’s little else I can do to prepare for this kid other than sleeping a lot and eating my weight in Cheerios (which I’ve been trying, BELIEVE YOU ME). I feel utterly unprepared and incompetent which is a wonderful addition to my already exhausted state.
So instead of getting a house ready for an entire new person (and since I can no longer argue about the car seat because we finally made a decision), I will now spend my time getting myself worked up about breast pumps and episiotomies. Yeah, I just said that. If I have to think about it, so do you.
Remember back in February when I voluntarily had a giant needle stuck in my wrist to get rid of that bump? And then it went away and everything was fine?
It’s not fine anymore.
I can’t see the bump yet, but I know it’s coming. How do I know? I can’t bend my wrist back farther than about 15 degrees.
There’s no way I’m going to deal with surgery right now, so I guess once it makes its appearance, I’ll get the bastard taken care of again. Because as of right now, lifting anything over 2 pounds hurts like holy hell.
