Weekend Checkin

Hi Folks,

First, I have to start with a funny story. I don't have the knack of telling it in a clever way, but if you imagine the visuals, it's funny.

Yesterday, mom and I were leaving a store and we found a man passed out drunk in the parking lot. We got him water, waited for emergency, etc. We were standing under a tree.

We got in the car and started to drive away and suddenly my chest hurt really bad (externally). It felt like something got trapped between the band of my bra (which is a little snug these days!) and the breast. I just thought something had fallen off the tree and right down my V-neck top and into my bra.

I pulled over to get it out, and when I reach in, I sliced my finger bad, right at the cuticle line (ouch!). The underwire had snapped and was stabbing me. It hadn't hurt like it usually does when that happens, so I'd exercised no caution at all in sticking my hand down there.

My hand is literally gushing. I sliced it at just the right angle that there was just a ton of blood, even though the injury itself was minor. I'm bleeding everywhere and my mom is frantically searching through her purse for something to wrap it with. It was too much blood for just a bandaid and I had no napkins or kleenex in the car, and we'd doused the towel I keep in the car in cold water and left it with the drunk man.

Finally, she remembers she has a maxi pad and we unfold that and wrap it around my finger and seal it with the bandaid.

It was throbbing pretty good and still bleeding something fierce so I'm trying to hold it up. I've got my elbow on the window sill and trying to keep my arm at a 90 degree angle, up. Problem is that I'm so tall that I couldn't hold my hand stretched without crashing into the roof of the car and to put my elbow down lower brought my hand too low down and didn't serve to elevate it above my heart. I go back and forth several times before I finally decide to crack the window at the top and slip my fingers out the top. Problem is that the maxi pad was so bulky that it separated that finger (the middle one) from all the others by a lot, so it just looked like I was driving down the freeway, flipping everyone off with a bloody maxipad :P

The good news (for us) is that there was a horrible, horrible 5 or 6 car accident on the freeway. Had the drunk man and the finger not delayed us, we very well could have been in the accident because it was in the lane I usually travel in, and occurred right about the time we would have been going through there had we left when we started to.

So, that's my story :D My dad and DH got a huge laugh at my expense last night.

Anyway....I swear I think my mother in law is going to disown me for all the uncouth stuff I post on this blog. She's so refined and polite. Sorry mom! :) (Just kidding--my mother in law is a wonderful woman! Good thing she is so polite, so she CAN'T disown me ;) :) )

My mom came up last weekend and caught me up on my cleaning again. Fortunately, I'd been too sick to really mess it up since the time before! Then this Friday my dad had to work here in our town, so she rode up with him and we spent the day playing. We went to Bab.iesR.Us and just walked around for 2 hours, looking at stuff and sort of getting an idea of what I like, what I might need, what stuff is ridiculous, etc. After two hours, we'd spent a grand total of... $6! :) We found these on clearance and I had to get them--I just giggled a lot. :D





We found some little socks with snowflakes and a little beret that will be so cute if baby's a girl, and if baby isn't, the hat was only $1. We were quite proud of ourselves for not going nuts, though we easily could have if we had known baby's gender.

It was so fun to just walk around and feel like I belonged there. I've tried to avoid baby stores in recent years, and when I've had to buy a baby gift, I shop at a department store or boxmart store, so the baby-ness is confined to one area, rather than a whole store. But yesterday I was able to go in and not feel like an impostor. It was so fun, and to do it with my mom added to it.

On the how-I'm-feeling front, I'm not convinced Reg.lan has done any good. I did go two days without vomiting, but I had...um...other digestive issues. Then those died down some, and the vomiting started right back up again. It did decrease in frequency a little so I've been able to eat a little more, but I'm still not able to eat much that's nutritious, which continues to bother me. Fruit and vegetables seem to upset me more violently than anything else, followed by protein. Carbs and sugar are the only things that seem to stay put with any sort of regularity, which is a disaster for a pre-dia.betic. So, I'm going to try to give it a few more days, and then ask my doctor for something different. I'm trying to be reasonable with my expectations; the reality of it is that I can't expect to be completely sickness-free. Some sickness just goes with the territory. My priority right now is getting to the point where I can eat healthy food. So, we'll see what he says. For those of you who suggested Zo.fran; I do know about it, but it's like the 5th line of defense in my doctor's practice. He has you try the natural "home remedies" first, then the Uni.som/B6 combination, then the Reg.lan, then something else, and then if that doesn't work, Zo.fran after that. So I'm trying to follow what he thinks is best. We'll see what he says.

Thanks to all of you who left comments and sent me encouraging emails when I was wrestling so much. I can be such a fear and guilt driven person and I was really allowing that to trap me, so thank you for your encouragement and admonishment and prayers. I really do appreciate you knocking some sense into me.

DH is on another late-night "I think maybe I could keep this down, could you get some for me while I hang out in the bathroom" run to the store. He's so sweet. I know a lot of people complain that their husbands don't "get" it but this man totally does. I'm not surprised; he's always been one of the sweetest, most patient, generous people I know. But this pregnancy, he's just going above and beyond the call of duty. If I don't quite get to the bathroom before I'm sick, he cleans up after me. He brings me whatever I need or want. He caresses my back and snuggles me when I feel lousy. He rubs my feet if they hurt. He's gracious to me when I feel like all I can do is lie in bed. He makes endless trips to restaurants and grocery stores when I think of something that sounds like it won't make me sick. He goes to all my doctor's appointments with me. He kisses baby goodnight. He works his tail off for us. He really is the most wonderful man. I feel like such a mooch, but he keeps telling me I'm doing the hard part. Even his attitude is wonderful.

Speaking of wonderful, he surprised me today with the information that he'd earned enough extra money this month for us to pay off the last of our debt. We're now consumer-debt free and all that remains is my student loan and our mortgage. We've been living on a pretty frugal budget since January, trying to pay off a pretty substantial debt. We implemented a lot of things we learned from reading Dave Ramsey (though we don't agree with everything he says), and those things, and us both buckling down on both our spending and our earning (me more when I was working two jobs and not pregnant), and that allowed us to have our transfer (that resulted in this pregnancy) much sooner, and pay off this debt. God has been really generous in providing for us. While I've contributed from the money management/decrease spending issue, from since I quit my second job, the final payoff has really been completely DH's doing. He's been working so hard for us, and when you factor in that it's 115 out and he has an outside job, it's just pretty incredible. I truly couldn't have asked for a better husband. He shows Jesus to me in so many ways.

Having the last of the debt gone makes me rest a little easier about upcoming baby expenses. Our medical insurance premiums are going up again in price, as are our out-of-pocket costs for copays and deductibles. Plus, we committed to the Genetic Parents that we'd bank baby's cord blood (one of their non-negotiables), which is pretty expensive, and then baby's going to need things like diapers and a place to sleep! We could have managed before, but I definitely feel like we have more breathing room, now, especially since we don't know how my remaining job will work out after baby comes, if at all (we intend for me to be primarily stay-at-home, but my job is only 15 hours a week, so we'll see if it works out to keep it).

So that's the update from us. How are all of you?